Advance  Sheets  of 

A IKHBFof  The  Illinois  State  Historical  Library,   No.    15, 

0  \ 

o|    THE  KENSINGTON   RUNE-STONE 

\  ^g^     A  Modern  Inscription  from  Douglas  County,  Minnesota 

By 
GEORGE  T.  FLOM 

0(  the  Univaiity  of  lUinoi* 


PUBLISHED  BY 

THE  ILLINOIS  STATE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY 

SPRINGFIELD,     ILL. 
1910 


The  Kensington  Rune-Stone 


AN    J  D  D  R  E  S  S 

by 
GEO'RGE    T.    FLOM 

Delivered  before  The  Illinois 
State  Historical  Society  at  its 
Annual  Meeting,  May  5-6, 
1910  at  Springfield,    Illinois 


SPRINGFIELD: 
Phiixips  Bros.,  Printers 
1910 


en 
en 


-J 


THE  KENSINGTON  RUNE  STONE.^ 


In  the  fall  of  1898  there  was  found  on  a  farm  a  little 
over  three  miles  northeast  of  Kensington,  Douglas 
County,  Minnesota,  a  stone  with  a  series  of  runic  charac- 
ters inscribed  upon  it.  The  finder  of  the  stone  was  Oluf 
Ohman,  who  is  also  the  owner  of  the  farm  on  which  it 
was  found;  with  him  at  the  time  of  the  finding,  we  are 
told,  was  his  little  son  Edward,  then  ten  years  old.  The 
stone  is  a  small  one,  only  about  thirty  inches  long,  about 
half  as  wide  and  seven  inches  thick  at  the  upper  end.  At 
the  base  it  is  narrower,  being  considerably  bevelled  on 
the  back.  The  inscription  which  is  a  rather  long  one,  as 
inscriptions  go,  contains  in  all  fifty-six  words  and  several 
cS  numbers,  a  total  of  211  characters,  of  which  152  occur  on 
the  face  of  the  stone  and  fifty-nine  on  the  left  edge;  it 
begins  near  the  top  of  the  stone  and  extends  a  little  below 


^         i[The  present  somewhat  detailed  examination  of  the  subject  has  been 

cr      prompted  merely  by  the  desire  to  aid  in  establishing  and  recording  the 

^      truth.    The  author  has  so  far  not  wished  to  take  part  in  the  discussion, 

3      though  his  opinion  of  the  language  and  the  runes  has  frequently  been 

s^;      requested,    because    he    refused    to    believe    that    an    inscription,    the 

o      language  of  which  is  modem  and  radically  different  from  Old  Swedish 

it;      should  long  be  able  to  maintain  itself  as  authentic.    He  was  therefore 

_j      not  a  little  astonished   when   in  January  last  he  was   informed   that 

^      the  stone  was  coming  to  be  generally  regarded  as  authentic  and  that 

*j;      the  Minnesota   Historical   Society  was   about  to   put   itself   on   record 

for  it,  that  its  Museum  Committee,  after  a  "careful"  investigation  of 

the  whole  question,  had  arrived  at  that  conclusion  and  were  ready  to 

report   that   the   inscription    was   genuine.     He    further    learned    that 

no  Scandinavian  philologist  had  been  present   in  their  sessions,  that 

philologists  had  not  been  consulted,  and  that  apparently  the  linguistic 

questions    involved   were   not   appreciated   by   the   committee.     When, 

therefore,  the  stone  was  to  be  exhibited  at  a  meeting  of  the  Chicago 

Historical   Society  on   February   third   last   and   he   was    urged   to  be 

present  and  discuss  the  language  of  the  inscription  he  thought  it  his 

duty  to  do  so.     He  has  since  visited  the  locality  where  the  stone  wa« 


1267082 


the  middle  of  it  and  to  a  corresponding  distance  on  the 
edge.  The  stone  itself  is  partly  graywacke,  partly  cal- 
cite,  the  latter  being  the  lower  left  hand  corner  and  ex- 
tending about  two-thirds  up  on  the  side ;  some  ten  of  the 
runes  are  cut  in  the  calcite  part  of  the  stone. 

The  stone  was  found  in  the  ground  close  to  and  partly 
under  a  young  tree,  two  of  whose  roots  had  twined  them- 
selves around  the  stone,  the  one  perpendicularly  down 
under  the  stone,  the  other  along  its  surface  clear  to  the 
other  edge,  where  it  again  followed  the  outline  of  the 
stone  downward.  Mr.  Ohman^  informs  me  that  the  tree 
looked  stunted;  that  is,  it's  age  might  be  greater  than  its 
size  would  indicate.  The  tree  which  was  an  asp,  has  not 
been  preserved,  but  the  stump  was  kept  for  some  time 
and  examined  the  following  spring  by  several  men,  who, 
thinking  there  might  be  a  treasure  hidden  under  the  spot 
where  the  stone  was  found,  dug  below  to  a  distance  of  six 
or  seven  feet.  There  was  no  other  stone  of  any  kind 
encountered  in  the  ground  under  the  spot,  nothing  that 
could  have  served  as  a  base  for  the  rune  stone.  It  had 
either  been  planted  directly  into  the  ground  or  had  been 
buried  in  the  ground  in  the  position  in  which  it  was 
found.  When  found  the  side  with  the  inscription  was 
down,  the  bevelling  thus  being  up,  a  circumstance  to 
which  I  shall  return  below.^ 


found  and  the  Minnesota  State  Historical  Society's  Museum,  and  ex- 
amined the  runes  and  made  his  own  transcription  of  them.  This  to- 
gether with  certain  new  discoveries  are  embodied  in  this  paper,  among 
them  the  identification  of  the  dialect  and  certain  facts  of  local  history 
from  Douglas  County,  Minnesota.  While  knowing  that  the  runological- 
philological  questions  involved  are  the  only  ones  that  have  scientific 
value,  he  has  upon  special  request  also  undertaken  an  investigation  of 
the  general  external  evidence.  These  results,  covering  the  various 
phases  of  the  question  but  stressing  the  linguistic  and  runological 
features  of  it.  he  was  then  invited  to  read  before  the  annual  meeting 
of  the  Illinois  State  Historical  Society  at  Springfield,  Illinois,  on  May 
sixth.  1910.  The  paper  is  here  printed  as  there  presented,  except  for  the 
references  and  a  few  technical  details.  The  paper  was  illustrated  by 
a  syllabus,  photographs,  runic  alphabets  and  impressions  of  old  rune- 
stones.] 

2The  name  has  been  Americanized  from  5hman. 

3This  fact  was  told  me  by  Mr.  H.  H.  Winchell  and  corroborated  by 
Mr.  Ohman. 


Upon  the  request  of  Mr.  Ohman,  I  am  told,  Mr.  Samuel 
Olson*  sent  the  stone  to  Professor  Curme  of  North- 
western University  for  examination.  It  is  reported  that 
Professor  Curme  was  at  first  inclined  to  regard  the  in- 
scription as  genuine,  but  that  he  later  arrived  at  a  dif- 
ferent conclusion.  The  stone  was  then  returned  to  Mr. 
Ohman.*  The  find  aroused  considerable  discussion  in  the 
press  at  the  time,  but  the  unusual  character  of  some  of 
the  runes  made  a  reliable  transcription  difficult  and  the 
stone  was  not  therefore  submitted  to  a  detailed  examina- 
tion. The  prevailing  attitude  was  one  of  skepticism  and 
Mr.  Ohman  was  told  'Hhe  expert"  had  pronounced  it 
recent ;  he  then  put  it  in  front  of  his  granary,  where  for 
ten  years  it  was  used  as  a  door-step. 

About  two  years  ago  interest  in  the  stone  was  again 
revived  by  the  report  of  an  account  of  it  which  appeared 
in  Husbibliotek,  3,  for  1908,  in  which  the  stone  was  pro- 
nounced authentic  by  one  who  was,  it  seems,  then  en- 
gaged in  a  study  of  the  Vinland  voyages,  and  who  saw 
in  it  a  document  of  great  historical  value,  recording  as 
it  alleges  Norse  visits  to  America  as  late  as  1362,  i.  e. 
238  years  later  than  the  historically  recorded  last  Vin- 
land voyage.  This  report  was  by  a  Mr.  H.  R.  Holand, 
who  had  purchased  the  stone  from  Mr.  Ohman  or,  as  it 
now  appears,  a  share  in  the  stone.  Since  that  time  Mr. 
Holand  has  devoted  much  time  and  energy  in  the  gather- 
ing and  publishing^  of  evidence  looking  toward  establish- 
ing the  genuineness  of  the  inscription.  And  contribu- 
tions pro  and  con  have  recently  appeared  in  considerable 
number.® 


*Since  this  paper  was  written  I  ha\ie  learned  that  Professor  O.  J. 
Breda,  then  of  Minnesota  University,  now  of  Christiana,  Norway,  also 
at  the  time  passed  adversely  on  the  stone. 

*Jeweler  and  optician  of  Kensington,  formerly  of  Milwaukee. 

SjSeveral  articles  in  Skandinaven  one  in  Symra  (Decorah,  Iowa)  and 
one  in  Harper's  Weekly,  Oct.  9,  1909. 

.  eThus  e.  g.,  to  mention  only  a  few.  by  Dr.  Knut  Hoegh,  "Om  Kensing- 
ton og  Elbow  Lake  Stenene"  in  Symra,  V,  pp.  178-189,  by  R.  B.  Ander- 
Bon  in  Wisconsin  State  Journal,  Feb.  7,  1910,  by  O.  E.  Hagen  in  Amerika, 
April  1,  1910  (bearing  the  title  "Ad  Utrumque  Parati  Siraus"),  and  by 
R.  B.  Anderson,  Amerika,  Feb.  18,  1910 


6 

The  basis  of  the  discussion  has  been  the  conditions 
surrounding  the  discovery  of  the  stone,  there  being  ap- 
parently no  evidence  of  fraud  here.  Among  these  are  the 
fact  that  the  stone  was  actually  found  in  the  ground,  the 
veracity  of  the  men  who  saw  the  stone  and  the  tree,  the 
apparent  age  of  the  tree,  the  weathering  of  the  stone, 
the  recent  settlement  of  that  locality,  the  unlikelihood 
that  any  of  the  earlier  settlers  of  that  region  should 
have  possessed  the  knowledge  of  runes,  or  if  so  had  any 
reason  for  foisting  such  a  fraud  upon  the  public,  etc. 
Those  who  have  been  skeptical  have  held  that  it  is  ab- 
surd to  suppose  that  a  company  of  explorers,  thirty  in 
number,  should  in  1362  have  succeeded  in  penetrating 
from  Vinland  on  the  Atlantic  coast  clear  to  Western 
Minnesota,  that  to  do  that,  furthermore,  in  fourteen  days 
would  have  been  a  physical  impossibility;  that  the  in- 
scription itself  looks  too  recent,  that  there  is  much  un- 
certainty as  to  the  age  of  the  tree,  that  the  evidence  is 
too  vague  and  general,  and  that  there  has  as  yet  been  no 
thorough  and  scientific  examination  of  the  subject. 

Among  the  contributions  to  the  discussion  there  is  a 
short  article  by  Helge  Gr jessing  of  Lysaker,  Norway, 
which  was  published  some  months  ago  in  Symra,  V.  pp. 
113-26,  in  which  he  discussed  quite  fully  the  numeric 
system  employed  and  the  historical  conditions  involved; 
he  also  treated  briefly  of  the  runes  and  the  language,  in 
his  conclusion  denying  the  authenticity  of  the  stone.  Mr. 
Gjessing  dealt  broadly  with  all  phases  of  the  question; 
his  discussion  is  scholarly  and  his  conclusions  justified 
at  every  point  by  the  material  he  presents.  But  his 
article  is  brief  and  he  contented  himself  with  too  cursory 
a  treatment  of  the  linguistic  test  for  the  article  to  be  as 
generally  convincing  as  it  deserved  to  be.^  A  more 
thorough  analysis  of  the  whole  inscription  will  be  found 
to  offer  an  abundance  of  added  evidence  that  we  have  to 


TThe  "Answer  to  Gjessing"  in  Symra  V,  pp.  210-13,  of  course  fails 
absolutely  to  meet  the  points  at  issue. 


do  here,  not  with  a  fourteenth  century  inscription,  but 
with  a  narrative  in  a  modern  dialect— recorded  in 
modern  runic  characters. 


Observing  the  stone  one's  doubts  may  well  be  aroused, 
however,  even  by  the  external  facts  that  he  meets  with— 
the  smooth  surface  of  the  stone  which  gives  it  the  ap- 
pearance of  having  been  shaped  and  chiseled  in  recent 
times  by  some  mason  for  this  particular  purpose ;  and  the 
perfectly  distinct  runes  themselves,  so  different  from 
the  characters  of  genuine  old  inscriptions,  roughened 
through  weathering  and  often  worn  down  utterly  beyond 
recognition. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  Kensington  stone  is  partly 
of  comparatively  soft  calcite,  and  yet  the  runes  of  this 
particular  part  of  the  stone  are  as  clear  and  distinct  as 
they  are  on  the  upper  part  which  is  of  graywacke.  Had 
the  stone  been  planted  and  its  face  subjected  to  contin- 
ued weathering  for  a  series  of  years  the  runes  upon  this 
part  of  the  stone  would  have  been  disfigured  to  a  far 
greater  extent  than  those  of  the  rest  of  the  inscription. 
That  these  runes,  however,  are  as  legible  as  the  rest 
limits  the  possible  period  of  weathering  so  much  as  to 
practically  establish  the  probability  that  the  stone  never 
was  planted.  Further,  it  was  observed  above  that  the 
stone  was  found  with  the  face  down,  the  bevelling  at  the 
base  being  up.  But  in  a  stone  of  this  thickness,  seven 
inches  at  the  top  and  with  a  base  of  only  about  four 
inches  ,  the  face  being  perfectly  straight,  there  would  be 
so  much  more  weight  to  the  back  of  the  central  line  in 
the  base  as  to  make  it  certain  that  the  stone  would  have 
fallen  backwards,  for  there  was  no  stone  to  have  formed 
a  support  behind  and  there  is  every  likelihood  that  the 
ground  would  have  been  made  as  firm  in  front  of  the 
stone  as  at  the  back.  ThMS  in  the  position  of  the  stone 
when  found  there  is  the  strongest  circumstantial  evi- 
dence that  the  stone  was  originally  buried,  not  pla/nted. 


But  it  is  Baid,  the  ealcite  does  show  considerable  decay, 
pieces  of  the  stone  are  there  chipped  off  and  the  surface 
is  rougher.  However,  it  is  not  the  age  of  the  stone  itself 
that  is  in  dispute,  but  the  time  when  the  runic  features 
were  carved  into  it.  The  stone  may  have  lain  on  the 
ground  a  very  long  time  and  become  much  decayed  by 
long  weathering,  but  that  has  of  course  no  bearing  upon 
the  age  of  the  inscription.  Anyone  who  studies  the  sur- 
face of  the  Kensington  stone  will  find  plenty  of  sus- 
picious features.  Through  the  decaying  and  wearing 
away  of  the  stone  portions  of  the  inscriptions  of  many 
an  old  rune-stone  have  been  effaced  and  its  text  often  left 
fragmentary.  But  our  Kensington  rune-master  was 
more  fortunate;  the  stone  went  on  decaying,  pieces  fall- 
ing off  (observe  the  piece,  three  inches  long,  near  the 
upper  left  hand  corner,  and  observe  the  depressions  else- 
where), but  by  some  miraculous  influence  the  disinte- 
grating process  failed  to  affect  the  runic  characters; 
they  were  to  be  left  unmarred  so  that  nothing  in  the  ac- 
count left  by  these  intrepid  explorers  might  be  spoiled! 
The  lower  portion  of  the  stone  is  not  inscribed ;  that  part 
was  to  be  placed  in  the  ground,  we  are  told, — or  did  the 
scribe  stop  where  he  did  to  continue  on  a  more  suitable 
surface  on  the  edge  of  the  stone f 

There  is  further  the  thoroughly  modem  character  of 
the  narrative  itself,  so  very  circumstantial  in  its  account 
of  the  direction  of  the  journey,  the  purpose,  their  stop- 
ping over  night  by  two  skerries  a  day's  journey  north 
of  the  stone,  their  being  out  fishing,  their  return  home 
finding  their  comrades  red  with  blood  and  dead.^  and 
finally  the  information  that  they  have  ten  men  by  the 
ocean  looking  after  their  boats,  and  how  long  it  would 
take  to  get  back  there.  Now,  in  the  old  inscriptions  the 
circumstances  of  an  experience  are  never  told  with  such 
care  of  details.     It  is  only  the  one  important  event  or 

"Observe! 


9 

fact  that  is  there  told  in  the  shortest  possible  space.  The 
detailed  character  of  our  narrative  is  also  evidenced  in 
the  author's  preciseness  in  his  numbers;  and  further 
the  method  of  giving  the  year  is  characteristic  of  the 
modern  inscriptions  of  the  17th  century  to  the  19th  cen- 
tury. In  the  old  inscriptions  the  year  would  have  been 
indicated  in  harmony  with  the  practice  of  the  time,  as 
*Hhe  seventh  year  of  the  rule  of  king  Hakon,"  etc. 

Then  there  is  further  the  preposterous  assumption  that 
twenty  men  returning  to  camp,  finding  that  ten  of 
their  number  had  been  butchered  by  the  Indians  in 
their  absence,  should  go  a  day's  journey  still  farther  in- 
land into  the  wild  country,  and  then  cooly  sit  down  and 
remain  there  while  one  of  their  number  carved  on  a 
stone  the  complete  record  of  their  tragic  experience,  a 
task  which  would  have  taken  several  days  perhaps.  The 
neatness  of  the  job  shows  that  the  work  was  done  with 
care"  and  desire  for  detail  that  indicates  the  mental  at- 
titude of  composure,  no  fear  of  further  disturbance,  an 
attitude  which  is  quite  incompatible  with  that  which  we 
naturally  assume  to  have  existed  under  the  circum- 
stances narrated  in  the  inscription. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  internal  evidence. 

I  can  not  stress  too  strongly  that  where  we  are  dealing 
with  an  alleged  old  inscription  in  a  language  whose  his- 
tory is  known,  the  scientific  test  of  authenticity  lies  prin- 
cipally in  the  vocabulary  and  the  linguistic  forms  of  the 
inscription.  If,  as  in  this  case,  the  alphabet  used  is  a 
runic  one,  then  the  runic  characters  employed  offer  a 
valuable  collateral  test.  The  key  for  determining  the  age 
of  inscriptions  is  always  to  he  found  in  the  internal  evi- 
dence of  the  inscription  itself.  Now  it  is  a  most  elementary 
principle  in  the  science  of  philology  that  a  living  language 
is  constantly  undergoing  slow  imperceptible  changes  ac- 
cording to  certain  definite  tendencies.    It  is  the  province 


,  .»Thi5  fact  was  also  pointed  out  by  Dr.  C.  N.  Gould,  of  Chicago  Uni: 
versity,  in  his  report  to  the  Museum  Committee  at  St.  P^ul. 


10 

of  the  philologist  to  ascertain  and  formulate  the  laws 
that  have  governed  all  these  changes  and  to  fix  their 
chronology.  Upon  the  basis  of  such  study  the  character 
of  a  language  in  its  different  periods  may  be  ascertained 
and  the  history  of  the  language  written. 

With  archeological  finds  it  may  often  happen  that  the 
date  of  the  find  can  be  given  only  in  the  most  general 
way,  according  to  the  known  characteristics  of  the  dif- 
ferent periods;  this  frequently,  because  of  the  nature  of 
the  archeologist^s  material  and  the  more  limited  criteria 
at  hand.  But  in  tracing  the  changing  forms  of  art  and 
in  the  classification  of  his  material  he  need  experience 
no  such  uncertainty.  The  archeologist  and  the  philolo- 
gist have  a  common  scientific  interest  in  old  inscriptions 
upon  old  finds;  the  philologist  is  interested  in  the  in- 
scription as  a  linguistic  document  and  a  record  of  the  life 
and  activities  of  a  people,  the  archeologist  is  interested  in 
the  find  as  an  archeological  document  and  a  record  of  the 
cultural  history  of  the  race  or  of  a  region.  The  arche- 
ologist interprets  and  classifies  his  find — he  may  assign 
it  to  a  particular  time  in  the  civilization  of  the  race  ac- 
cording to  the  type  of  art  and  industry  and  the  degree 
of  advancement  it  exhibits.  But  the  inscription  offers 
in  this  case  a  much  more  specific  means  for  fixing  the 
date  and  he  accepts  for  it  the  date  which  the  philologist 
determines,  who  tests  it  by  the  known  facts  of  the 
language  for  its  different  periods. 

About  2,300  ancient  and  medieval  runic  inscriptions 
have  been  discovered  in  the  Scandinavian  Countries/" 
The  inscriptions  are  for  the  most  part  preserved  in  the 
various  National  and  Royal  Museums  and  Libraries  of 
the  Scandinavian  North.  Of  this  number  nearly  2,000 
are  Swedish,"  but  the  oldest  are  Danish  and  Norwegian. 


loAnd  a  considerable  number  in  Great  Britain. 

"On  the  age  and  dietribution  of  the  Swedish  inscriptions  the  in- 
terested reader  may  be  referred  to  Noreen's  Altschtoedische  Orammatik, 
§6.  The  subject  is  discussed  briefly  and  more  popularly  In  Noreen's  Df 
nordiska  Sprdken,  1903,  pp.  5-10. 


11 

The  great  preponderance  of  Swedish  inscriptions  over 
the  Danish  and  the  Norwegian  is  significant  for  the  place 
runic  lore  and  the  art  of  writing  runes  occupied  among 
the  Swedes  at  that  time.'^  The  inscriptions  have  been 
subjected  to  most  careful  study  by  eminent  Scandinavian 
runologists,  as  Ludwig  F.  A.  Winmier  in  Denmark, 
the  late  Sophus  Bugge  in  Norway  and  others.'^  The  latter 
of  these  is  the  author  of  a  work  in  which  all  the  runic  in- 
scriptions of  Norway  are  given  a  minute  philological" 
examination,  namely,  "Norges  Indskrifter  med  de  aeldre 
Runer'*  and  '^Norges  Indskrifter  med  de  yngre  Runer," 
Christiana,  1894-05/* 

It  is  recognized  by  the  scientific  bodies  who  are  the 
keepers  of  these  museums  and  libraries  that  the  runo- 
logical  and  linguistic  investigation  furnishes  the  only 
definite  criteria  of  date,  and  in  the  dating  of  an  inscrip- 
tion they  are  guided  accordingly/^ 

Among  the  settled  facts  of  the  science  of  runology  is 
that  of  the  three  successive  alphabets  and  the  order  in 
which  they  succeeded  each  other.  The  oldest  series  of 
twenty-four  runes  began  early  in  the  Viking  age  to  be 
supplanted  by  a  shorter  alphabet  of  sixteen,  which  con- 
tinued in  use  for  about  three  centuries."  The  so-called 
*' youngest"  alphabet  began  to  come  into  use  in  the  tenth 
century,  later  wholly  replacing  the  second  runic  alpha- 
bet, the  evolution  of  the  third  runic  alphabet  of  twenty- 
four  characters  out  of  the  one  of  sixteen  being  prompted 
by  the  development  of  new  sounds  in  the  language.  The 
evolution  of  these  three  runic  alphabets  was  fairly  uni- 


i2As  to  a  later  time  see  below. 

i3The  chief  authority  on  runes  in  Norway  now,  is  Prof.  Magnus  Olson. 

i*Wimmer's  great  work  is  De  danske  Runemindesmarker,  I-IV, 
Copenhagen,  1895-1908. 

isThere  may  of  course  often  be  other  evidences  also. 

leThe  great  work  upon  the  subject  is  Die  Runenschrift,  revised  edi- 
tion, Berlin,  1887,  by  Professor  Wimmer,  the  founder  of  the  science ; 
the  basis  of  this  work  is  his  Runernes  Oprindelse  og  UdvikUng  i  NoT' 
den,  Copenhagen,  1874. 


12 

form  throughout  the  whole  Scandinavian  North."  It  is 
also  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  this  alphabet  was  in  use  for 
several  centuries  as  the  alphabet  regularly  employed  in 
runic  writing  at  the  time,  very  much  as  we  today  employ 
our  particular  form  of  letters  in  all  writing  be<jause 
generally  used  and  generally  understood. 

With  these  facts  recognized  let  us  now  turn  to  the  in- 
scription of  the  Kensington  stone. 

In  general  the  transcription  of  the  stone  does  not  pre- 
sent any  serious  difficulty.     There    are    some    unusual 

characters,  such  as      Si      and       (r)     in  the  first  line, 

v>  in  the  second,  and  j    in  line  four  (fifth  letter  from 

the  margin).  Further,  also,  what  appears  to  be  a  punct- 
uated m-rune  is  used  for  v  as  in  the  initial  character  of 
the  name  Vinland.  Also  the  runes  for  k,  p  and  u  are  strik- 
ing, but  when  these  have  been  identified  (see  below),  there 
can  be  little  doubt  as  to  what  the  characters  of  the  inscrip- 
tion are  intended  to  convey.  The  two  transcriptions 
which  have  been  made  agree  also  in  nearly  all  particu- 
lars. One  of  these  was  published  on  page  fifteen  in  Har- 
per's Weekly,  for  October  9,  1909,  the  other  by  Mr.  H. 
Gjessing  in  Symra,  V.  page  116.  The  differences,  which 
are  due  to  different  reading  of  four  of  the  characters,  af- 
fect only  the  demonstrative  for  ' '  this ' '  before  sten  in  line 
five  on  the  face  of  the  stone,  and  before  the  word  oh  in  the 
last  line  of  the  continuation  on  the  edge  of  the  stone,  and 
of  the  sixth  and  seventh  characters  in  the  sixth  line  on 
the  front.  Otherwise  the  lines  are  throughout  the  whole 
inscription  perfectly  clear  and  distinct,  and  the  final 
vowel  in  the  word  before  ok  is  a  perfectly  clear  o-rune. 
Similarly  with  the  last  character  before  the  word  sten 
in  line  five;  it  is  a  little  irregular  but  clearly  has  not 
had  the  cross-bar  of  the  e-rune.    The  uncertainty  in  the 


I'Wimmer,  Die  Runenschrift,  page  300,  discusses  thie  question. 


13 

sixth  and  seventh  characters  in  h'ne  six  would  seem  to 
be  due  to  the  fact  that  the  original  types    i     al   have 

erroneously  been  written  for  P     i  ,  the  word  intended 

being  po  not  ok.  Discovering  this  the  author  has  then 
tried  to  correct  the  former,  the  result  being  the  hybrid 
forms  which  the  inscription  exhibits. 

In  the  third  runic  series  the  rune         1)    stood  for  the 

dental  spirant.  This  rune  occurs  fourteen  times  in  the 
inscription.  Mr.  Gjessing  has  correctly  and  consistently 
transcribed  dli,  but  the  transcription  in  Harper's  Weekly 
cited  has  dag  in  line  five,  as  also  op^a^else  in  line  two, 
while  in  lines  six  and  eleven  the  same  word  is  written 
with  initial  dh,  (dhag).  Inasmuch  as  dh,  th,  represented, 
the  spirant  in  Old  Swedish,  a  sound    which    in    runic 

script  was  written     4)     ,  it  becomes  impossible  to  read 

anything  but  dh  (and  th)  in  this  word  as  in  the  rest  of 

the  fourteen  cases  where  the  rune  thorn,    4)  ,  is  used 

if  we  attempt  to  transcribe  into  the  runic  series  of  that 
time.  I  shall  return  to  this  rune  below.  For  the  moment 
then  we  shall  consider  the  language  on  the  basis  of  these 
transcriptions,  writing  po  in  line  six  and  dheno  in  lines 
five  and  twelve.  The  inscription  would  then  read  as 
follows : 

8  goter  ok  22  norrmen  po  opdhagelsefaerdh  fro  Vinlandh 
of  vest  vi  hadhe  laeger  vedh  2  skjser  en  dhags  rise  norr  fro 
dheno  sten  vi  var  po  fiske  en  dhagh  aeptir  vi  kom  hem  fan  10  man 
rodhe  af  blod  og  dhedh  A.  V.  M.  fraelse  af  illu. 

har  10  mans  ve  havet  at  se  aeptir  vore  skip  14  dhagh  rise  from 
dheno  oh  ahr  1362. 

One  who  is  familiar  with  Old  Swedish  will  find  in  these 
few  sentences  of  fifty-six  words  spellings  that  do  not  rep- 
resent the  pronunciation  of  Swedish  in  the  year  1362; 
adjective,  noun  and  verb  inflexional  forms  that  were  not 


14 

used  at  the  time;  words  occurring  which  had  not 
come  into  use  and  did  not  exist  in  fourteenth  century 
Swedish,  while  other  words  are  employed  in  meanings 
which  they  did  not  have  at  that  time  but  only  assumed 
several  centuries  later.    I  shall  take  the  inflexions  first. 

1.    Inflexion. 

vi  var,  vi  kom,  (vi)  fan,  (vi)  har.  In  Swedish  of  the 
fourteenth  century  the  first  person  plural  of  the  present 
indicative  still  regularly  had  the  ending  um,  the  shorter 
forms  being  modern.  On  the  inscriptions  of  that  time 
the  forms  are  therefore  vi  varom,  vi  komom,  vi  funnum, 
and  vi  liavom.^^  In  middle  Swedish  the  third  person 
plural  in  a  is  often  taken  over  into  the  first  person,  as  vi 
skula,  Styffe  II,  36,  from  1396 ;  other  occurrences  are  cited 
in  Soderwall's  Hufvudepokerna  af  svenska  Sprdkets 
Uthildning,  Lund,  1870,  page  66,  But  the  transference 
of  the  singular  var,  fan,  kom  and  har  to  the  plural  is 
comparatively  recent.^®  The  verb  hava  is  in  the  third 
person  singular,  in  the  fourteenth  century  and  long  after 
regularly  haffver  (as  han  haffver  xi  soner).^^ 

vi  kom  hem  fan  10  man  rodhe  af  hlodh  og  dhedh. .  The 
accusative  plural  of  the  adjective  was  in  fourteenth  cen- 
tury Swedish  -a,  hence  here  rodha  and  dodha.  Later  the 
ending  becomes  ce.  Plural  mans  is  of  course  also  irregular. 

vi  hadhe.  Should  be  vi  haff thorn  or  haffdhom.  vi 
hadhe  is  modern  (spelled  hade,  or  in  Norwegian  hadde 
besides  havde).  The  modern  scribe  has  here  employed 
the  verb  form  of  his  own  speech.  Hadde  occurs  in  a  Di- 
plome  of  1453,  but  of  course  as  third  person  singular. 

fra  dheno  sten.  Should  be  fra    poessom    sten  (variant 


18UTO  or  om  according  to  the  principles  of  vowel  harmony  and  vowel 
balance. 

i»For  verification  of  all  these  facts  see  Noreen  cit.,  or  Rydquist'B 
Svenska  Sprdkets  Lagar,  Vol.  I. 

2ocf.  also  haver  in  sentence  cited  and  misunderstood  in  Symra,  V, 
p.  211. 


15 

toemma    sten):  later  fra  may  also  govern  the  accusative, 
which  would  give  the  form  fra     ^enna    sten.    Dheno 

(deno)  is  an  impossible  forai  in  any  position. 

at  se  ceptir  vore  skip.  Se  ceptir  in  Old  Swedish,  like 
Old  Norse  sja  eptir,  meaning  'look  after,  take  care  of 
governed  the  dative  case,  which  further  had  the  ending 
nm  {om)  for  adjective  and  noun  in  the  plural.  The  cor- 
responding Old  Swedish  phrase  then  was  at  se  (eptir 
varom  skipum.  Except  for  the  word  (eptir  the  phrase 
on  the  Kensington  rune-stone  is  that  of  present  speech. 
On  sja  eptir  in  Old  Norse  see  Fritzner  Ordbog  III,  page 
256.    But  see  below. 

from  dheno  oh.    Old  Swedish  o  is  a  feminine  noun; 

the  demonstrative  pronoun  for  this  was    paesse    in  Old 
Swedish,  which  again  was      Paesse    in  the  dative  and 
paessa  orpaenna       in  the  accusative  case.  The  corre- 
sponding phrase  was  then  in  Old  Swedish :  fra    d)  (^nna  o. 

2.     The  Meaning  of  Certain  Words. 

po.  Pa.  which  at  that  time  was  just  forming  from 
xipp-a  >  up-pa  could  not  be,  and  was  not,  used  in  this  way. 
uppa  meant  'upon'  'on  the  top  of,'  used  with  reference  to 
locality,  not  with  reference  to  an  activity."  One  could  say 
pa  jordhen,  'on  the  ground,'  but  for  'on  a  fishing  trip'  or 
'out  a-fishing,'  one  said  a  fiski  (cf  in  Old  Norse  vera  a 
fiski,  sitja  a  fiski  (Fritzner  under  fiski).  The  use  of  pa 
(paa)  with  nouns  denoting  activity,  as  here,  is  modern, 
indeed  (in  Swedish)  comparatively  recent. 

opdhagelse.  This  word  Falk  and  Torp  show  to  have 
come  from  Dutch  opdagen,  'to  come  to  light,'  'to  dawn;' 

2iAs  correctly  given  by  Gjessing  in  Symra,  1909,  p.  121. 


16 

the  modem  meaning  of  the  word  is  due  to  High  German 
entdecken.  This  would  require  a  date  during  the  first 
period  of,  or  subsequent  to,  German  influence  on  the 
Swedish  language,  i.  e.  after  the  reformation.  The  author 
of  the  inscription,  therefore,  here  uses  a  word  which  in 
1362  was  Dutch  and  not  known  till  long  after  in  Scandi- 
navian speech.  The  conception  'journey  of  exploration' 
did  not  and  could  not  exist  in  1362."  Kanna  Icmdit  or 
njosna,  Old  Swedish  njusna,  was  used  but  not  in  the  sense 
of  'exploration.' 

lager.  This  is  a  later  loan  from  German.  The  Old 
Swedish  word  Icegher  meant:  (1)  burial  place,  (2)  copu- 
lation.^'* 

rise.  Old  Swedish  resa  meant  'to  raise,'  being 
originally  the  same  word  as  English  'raise.'  Resa, 
'journey,'  is  a  late  meaning-loan  from  German. 

se  ceptir.  The  idea  'look  after,  take  care  of,"  was  in 
Old  Swedish  expressed  by  tilse  {tilsea,  tilsia).  In  Old 
Norse  sja  eptir  and  sja  til  were  both  used.  See  Ryd- 
quists'  Ordbok  ofver  svenska  Sprdket,  pages  393  and  458, 
or  Soderwall's  Ordbok  ofver  svenska  Sprdket  i  Medel- 
tiden. 

3.    Pronunciation  and  Spelling. 

hadhe.    At  the  time  of  the  alleged  date,  the  preterite 

singular  form  of /^a/a,' to  have,' was     hafpe     that  is,  the 

disappearance  of  v  before  consonant  had  not  yet  taken 
place.  Hadhe  or  hade  (see  transcription,  page  24)  are 
impossible  forms  for  the  year  1362. 

vedh  should  be  vidh  or  vidher;  vedh  occurs  in  ''Jons 
Biiddes  Bok,  a  ms.  of  1487-1491.  The  development  of  i 
to  e  in  open  syllable  before  dh  which  brought  about  the 


220n   this  see  Juul   Dieserud's   excellent   discussion   in   Skandinaven 
for  May  4,  1910,  in  article  entitled  "Holand  og  Kensingtonspogen." 

23See  Fritzner  under  legr  and  Rydquist  under  Icegher. 


17 

change  of  vidher  to  vedher  begins  about  1400.  Kock 
cites  wedh,  from  older  vidh,  for  the  year  1620.  A  full 
discussion  of  the  development  of  the  e  in  Swedish  may 
be  found  in  Kock's  Svensk  Ljudhistoria,  Vol.  I,  pp.  27-59 
(1906).  In  the  third  line  from  the  end  of  our  inscription 
occurs  the  form  ve  which  is  merely  a  phonetic  writing  of 
the  modern  coloquial  Swedish  ve  (==  ved  but  d  silent). 

fro.  .The  pronounciation  was  regularly  with  the  vowel 
a.  Fra  and  fram  both  occur  as  prepositions  in  Middle 
Swedish  but  never  with  o  as  in^  from,'  last  line  of  the  in- 
scription.   On  the  identification  of  fro  see  below. 

of.  The  vowel  of  the  preposition  was,  and  still  is,  a, 
hence  the  form  here  required  is  df.  Comparison  with  the 
prefix  of,  meaning  'too,'  is  beside  the  point,  for  'of  is  an 
adverb;  (as  e.  g.  in  of  my  kit  'too  much'),  and  was  never 
used  for  'of,'  or  'from.'  Of  vest  for  'far  west'  would 
in  Old  Swedish  be  as  impossible  as  to  say  'too  west'  in 
English  today.  On  the  identification  of  (the  apparently 
archaic)  of  see  below. 

oh.  The  long  or  short  o-sound  in  Old  Swedish  was 
written  with  one  vowel.  When  final,  however,  length 
was  sometimes  indicated  by  doubling,  as  do,  doo,  etc., 
(see  Kock,  Ljudhistoria,  II  page  24),  which  was  also  in 
Middle  Swedish  the  regular  way  of  representing  length. 
The  writing  of  h  after  a  vowel  to  indicate  length  (as  in 
German)  is  due  to  modem  German  influence  and  is  char- 
acteristic of  the  seventeenth  century  in  certain  works,  as 
Georg  Stemhjelm's  Musae  Suetizantes  (1668) :  dhren  och 
da  game  lijda. 

ahr.    We  have  the  same  error  here  as  in  oh. 

dhag,  opdhagelse,  dhedh.  It  is  evident  from  these 
words  that  the  writer  of  the  runes  uses  the  character  for 
dh,  th,  (see  above  page  13)  not  only  for  the  cases  where 
spirantal  sound  actually  existed  (as  e.  g.,  in  fdrdh  and 
hlodh),  but  also  where  the  language  at  that  time  had 
the  stop  sound  d,  as  in  dhag  and  opdhagelse  and  in  the 


18 

first  dental  in  dhedh  (Old  Swedish  dodh).  If  we  as- 
sume the  date  to  be  the  fourteenth  century,  the  inscrip- 
tion would  be  in  the  alphabet  of  that  time,  in  which  d 
had  its  own  rune  (see  below),  the  spirants  dh  and  th 

being  written     4^  .    Hence  we  should  have  to  read  thag 

and  opthagelse  {th  =  voiced  as  in  'then'),  which  was 
not  the  pronunciation  of  that  time,  nor  had  been  since 
primitive  Germanic  times. 

The  word  for  'day'  was  pronounced  dagh  and  that  for 
'dead,'  dodh  (th).  To  have  said  thagh,  or  thodh  would 
have  been  as  impossible  in  the  language  of  that  time  as  it 
would  be  for  us  to  say  thay  for  'day'  or  then  for  'den* 
in  English  and  expect  to  be  understood. 

To  illustrate  to  the  lay  reader  the  language  of  the  time 
and  the  consistent  use  of  forms  I  cite  the  following  pass- 
age from  Sjdlinne  Throst,  1370,  manuscript  1430.  The 
second  selection— from  Margaret's  Chronicle,  late  15th 
century  MS.  1514-1525 — will  show  the  presence  still  of 
the  inflexional  features  which  are  lacking  in  the  Kensing- 
ton inscription: 

Christofforus  thydhyr  swa  mykyt  a  wart  maal  som'then  ther 
bar  Christum',  for  thy  han  bar  Christum  a  sinom  armom  j 
mgenniskio  like.  Han  bar  oc  Ihesu  Christi  nampn  j  sinom  mun 
DC  altidh  j  sine  hiarte.  Sancte  Christoffer  war  forst  een  hedh- 
nnnge  oc  het  Reprobus.  Han  war  staerkir  oc  stoor  oc  wael  xii  alna 
hreghir.  En  dagh  stodh  han  oc  thiaente  for  sinom  herra,  Canaan 
rikis  konunge.  Tha  fiol  i  bans  hugh,  at  han  ey  wilde  thiaena  vtan 
them  maektoghasta  herra  j  waerldinne  ware.  Honom  war  sakt 
aff  enom  maektoghum  oc  widhfraeghum  konung.  Han  kom  til 
hans  oc  bodh  honom  sina  thiaenist.  Konungen  sagh  han  wara 
een  froman  man;  togh  han  gladhlika  oc  gaema  til  sinn. 
Thet  haende  thser  aepte,  at  een  koklare  lekte  een  dagh  for  konuxins 
bordhe  oc  hafdhe  diaefwulsins  nampn  j  munne.  Swa  opta  han 
diaewulin  nampde  stygdis  konungin  widhir  oc  giordhe  kors  for 
sino  anne.  Thet  maerkte  Christofforus  wael  oc  spordhe  konungen 
hwat  han  ther  medh  mente.  Konungen  swaradhe  honom :  'Hwan 
then  tidh,  iak  horo,  etc. — (Sjdlinne  Throst.) 

Maedh  Guz  nadh  haffwom  wi  taenkt  at  haer  sammanskriffwa 
sancta  Birgitta  slaegt,  swa  mykyt  wi  haffwom  aff  sannindamaenn- 


19 

iskiom  sport  oc  hort.  Forst  ar  wetande,  at  sancta  Birgitta 
modherfadher  han  haet  haer  Baenkt  laghman  oc  war  thaes  konung- 
xens  brodher,  som  tha  styrdhe  i  rikeno.  Han  tok  sik  til  hustni 
ena  aedhlasta  oc  faeghersta  iomfru,  som  het  Sighridh,  wtfodh  aff 
godhe  slaekt  oc  tho  ey  aff  swa  store  oc  maektoghe  som  han,  for 
huilket  konungen  bans  brodber  wart  honom  mykyt  oblidher  oc 
saende  bonom  en  kiortel  balffwan  aff  gyllene  stykke  oc  balffwan 
aff  wadbmal,  til  smalikbet  oc  mente  tbar  madb,  at  ban  baffde 
wanwort  tberas  slaekt.  An  baer  Baenkt  laet  tbaen  delen  allan  be- 
saenkia  maed  gul  oc  paerlom  oc  maedh  dyrom  stenom  saetia,  swa  at 
han  wart  dyrare  an  tbaen  andre  delen.  Thaer  aepter  laet  konungen 
honom  wnsighia  oc  fegdba  bonom  oppa  sit  liff  oc  saende  honom 
bodb. — From  Noreen's  Altschwedisches  Lesebuch,  p.  104. 

Let  us  now  then  turn  to  the  question  of  runic  forms. 

There  has  come  down  to  us  a  most  remarkable  literary 
document  from  the  year  1300— a  manuscript  of  the  Scan- 
ian  Law  in  runes.  The  manuscript  is  written  in  the  runic 
alphabet  of  that  time,  "the  third"  or  ** youngest"  series 
of  twenty-four  characters,  as  enlarged  and  developed  out 
of  the  shorter  alphabet  of  sixteen  characters.  This  manu- 
script, called  Codex  Runicus,  has  been  edited  in  a  photo- 
lithographic reproduction  by  Prof.  P.  G.  Thorsen,  and 
an  illustrative  page  was  included  in  P.  Hansen's  Dansk 
Literaturhistorie.^*  The  alphabet  was  printed  on  page 
two  hundred  fifty-six  of  Wimmer's  Die  Runenschrift, 
edition  of  1887,  and  is  herewith  reproduced,  opposite 
page,  as  No.  1.  This  alphabet  is  often  called  the  punctu- 
ated runes,  because  new  runes  for  d,  e,  g,  p,  are  formed  by 
punctuation  of  older  runes  for  t,  i,  k  and  b..  It  is  to  be 
observed  (1)  that  the  rune  for  e  is  a  punctuated  stave; 
that  is,  the  old  rune  for  i  is  differentiated  by  punctuation 
to  designate  e,  (2)  that  the  runes  for  k  and  g  have  an  as- 
cending arm  on  the  right,  g  being  punctuated;  (3)  that 
the  rune  for  ^  is  a  stave  with  only  one  arm;  (4)  that  the 
rune  for  v  is  still  the  same  as  the  one  for  /,  though  it  is 
sometimes  punctuated;  (5)  that  there  are  distinct  runes 
for  cs  and  a;  (6)  that  the  rune  for  0  is  the  o-rune  with 


24There  is  a  fac-simile  of  a  ballad  fragment  reproduced  on  page  69 
of  Tiorsetn'fi  Runernes  Brug  til  Skrift. 


20 

the  two  bars  extending  across  to  the  right;  and  finally, 
(7)  that  the  rune  4)  can  only  represent  the  two  spir- 
ants. 

The  alphabet  of  the  Mariaklagan  (Lament  of  the  Vir- 
gin) of  the  beginning  of  the  15th  century  is  the  same  al- 
phabet, the  minor  variations  represent  the  tendencies 
that  developed  in  the  course  of  the  14th  century.-'^  One 
page  of  this  early  Middle  Swedish  poem  in  runes  was 
photographed  in  Thorsen's  Runernes  Brug  til  Skrift, 
Copenhagen,  1877,  page  fifty-seven.  The  original  is  now 
preserved  in  the  Eoyal  Library  at  Stockholm.  Its  alpha- 
iDet  is  here  reproduced  as  No.  2.  Mr.  Gjessing,  in  an 
article  previously  referred  to,  has  called  attention  (page 
119)  to  the  fact  that  the  alphabet  in  the  Rauland  inscrip- 
tion, 1352,  from  Telemarken,  Norway,  is  identical  with 
that  of  the  Scanian  law. 

Such  is  therefore  the  runic  system  then  in  use.  The 
difference  between  this  alphabet  and  that  of  the  Kensing- 
ton stone  will  be  most  clearly  shown  in  a  transliteration 
of  the  latter  into  an  alphabet.    See  opposite  page,  No.  3. 

The  divergence  between  the  third  runic  series  (see  al- 
phabet 1  and  2  opposite)  and  the  alphabet  of  the  Kensing- 
ton inscription  is,  as  will  be  seen,  very  pronounced.  The 
differences  are,  in  fact,  more  numerous  than  the  corre- 
spondences. The  only  runes  that  are  identical  are  those 
for  h,  f,h,  i,  I,  m,  and  s,  while  those  for  e  and  o  are  of  the 
same  general  type.  The  remaining  thirteen  of  the  total 
of  twenty-four  are,  however,  different  and  most  of  them 
of  a  wholly  different  type,  some  of  them  clearly  elabor- 
ated forms.    The  rune  for  g  has  an  ascending  arm  on 

25The  history  of  the  former  of  these  may  be  found  in  "Kobke's  Om 
Runerne  i  Norden,  1890,  pp.  80-81."  The  Mariaklagan  is  discussed  in 
"Schiick's  Svensk  Literaturhistoria"  a  fac-simile  of  one  page  also 
appears    on    page    four    of    this    work.      It    is    further    discussed    in 

o 

Alund  De  nordiska  Runorna.  pp.  75-77  and  in  Thorsen.  iSince  the  im- 
pression was  expressed  by  Mr.  Holand  at  the  Chicago  meeting  that 
modern  word  forms  occur  in  the  Lament,  I  take  occasion  to  say  this 
is  an  error;  the  inflexional  forms  are  the  old  ones. 


A    X. 
\ 


k 


2    X 


K 


3    X 


X 


I 


I B  -  R  4 1  1=  n  -  Js  ^  i.  ^ 

i)  a.    A.     ^    t^ili^dl-  Ml   X^     -]/    y    a.      6 

e  R  ^  1 1  r  ® 


r 


21 

the  left  of  the  stave  in  place  of  the  right ;  a  similar  change 
occurs  in  the  rune  for  v,  in  which  one  of  the  arms  has 
been  transferred  to  the  left  producing  a  stave  with  an  as- 
cending arm  on  each  side.  To  differentiate  from  the  m- 
rune  the  rune  for  v  is  punctuated.  The  runes  for  a,  j,  Jc, 
u,  y,  (E  and  '6  exhibit  still  greater  departures ;  in  fact,  most 
of  them  are  evidently  from  a  different  runic  alphabet,  and 
some  suggest  modern  compromises  with  the  correspond- 
ing Latin  letters.^*'  It  is  to  be  observed  especially  that  the 
dental  series  is  represented  only  by  two  runes,  one  for 
<i.(see  below)  and  one  for  t. 

The  question  thus  arises:  Where  does  this  alphabet 
come  from?  Was  it  used  anywhere  and  at  any  time  for 
purposes  of  writing?    The  answer  is  yes. 

Now  it  is  a  well-known  fact  that  the  knowledge  of  runes 
did  not  cease  with  the  Old  Scandinavian  period,  and  it 
has  long  ago  been  established  that  the  use  of  runes  was 
not,  in  Sweden  and  Denmark,  limited  to  inscriptions  on 
monuments.  We  need  only  to  cite  the  evidence  of  the 
runic  manuscript  of  the  Scanian  law,  and  the  fact  that 
occasionally  verses  in  runic  script  appear  in  the  old  bal- 
lads, which  were  not  committed  to'  writing  before  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century.  See  Thorsen :  Runernes 
Brug  til  Skrift  udenfor  det  monument  ale,  page  sixty- 
nine,  where  two  lines  in  runes  from  a  popular  ballad  are 
reproduced.  According  to  Grundtvig,  runes  appear  in 
twenty-seven  of  the  Old  Danish  ballads.  An  alphabet,  a 
to  V,  representing  the  runes  of  the  ballad  is  reproduced 
in  Thorsen 's  volume,  page  71 ;  the  date  is  the  middle  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  Its  runes  are,  however,  in  almost  com- 
plete agreement  with  that  of  the  third  or  youngest  Old 
Scandinavian  series."  While  these  runes  were  also  else- 


2«So      K^  is  the  letter  iJ  with  the  e-rune  set  inside  the  circle. 
2TThe  variations  represent  the  transition  to  the  later  alphabet;   8e« 

o 

below.     See  also  the  ballad  fragment  in  runes  in  Alund.    page  75,  or 
in  Thorsen. 


22 

where  published  in  modem  times,  as  by  Ole  Worm,  we 
cannot,  however,  find  here  the  literary  source  of  the  Ken- 
sington runes,  for  these  are  a  different  alphabet.  It  may 
be  pointed  out,  however,  that  runes  are  mentioned  in  Dan- 
ish ballads,  in  such  a  way  as  to  show  knowledge  of  the  for- 
mation of  runes  in  Denmark  and  their  correct  interpre- 
tation to  a  very  late  period.  See  note  71  in  Thorsen'a 
volume,  citing  Gamle  jyshe  Folkeviser,  No.  twenty,  "Den 
elskedes  Dod."  Thorsen  concludes:  "Den  Dag  i  Dag 
leve  saaledes  "Runerne"  endnu  gjennem  Folkevisen, — 
den  er  nedarvet  umiddelbart  og  vilkaarlig  fastholdt,  og 
Kilden  har  vasret  saa  dyb,  at  den  i  Tidernes  Lob  bar 
kunnet  bevare  og  forklare."  In  subsequent  pages  of  his 
work,  Thorsen  offers  an  abundance  of  evidence  of  the 
use  of  runes  in  Denmark  in  modem  times.^* 

This  we  also  find  to  be  the  condition  in  Sweden;  and 
what  is  more,  the  preservation  of  the  knowledge  of  runes 
and  skill  in  the  use  of  runes  here  received  royal  encour- 
agement, and  we  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  the 
practice  of  writing  runes  was  not  uncommon  among  the 
common  man  in  Sweden  until  the  last  century.  On  July 
fifth,  1684,  Charles  XI  decreed  upon  the  recommendation 
of  the  College  of  Antiquities :  att  de,  som  visade  storsta 
skicklighet  att  skara  runstafvor  och  att  nndervisa  om 
deras  bruk,  och  salunda  forma  allmogen  att  till  allmant 
begagnande  atertaga  de  samma,  skulle  atnjuta  friket  fran 
utskrifning  och  skatt  till  kongl,  majestat  och  kronan.*'^' 
(Thorsen,  note  69).  During  Gustavus  Adolphus's  Polish 
War,  in  1628,  Count  Jakob  de  la  Gardie  used  runic  ciphers 
in  secret  orders  sent  from  Riga  to  the  commanding  officer 


28Further  evidence  in  Alund,  De  nordiska  Runorna,  p.  77,  who  also 
cites  similar  evidence  for  Iceland,  as  a  rune-inscribed  gravestone  for 
1681. 

2»That  those  who  showed  greatest  skill  in  cutting  runestaves  and  In 
Instruction  how  to  use  them  and  thus  induce  the  common  man  to  a 
general  use  of  runes  should  be  exempt  from  military  duty  and  from 
taxes  to  his  royal  majesty  and  the  crown. 


23 

at  Bohus.^"   We  further  learn  that  several  of  these  letters 
have  been  preserved  (see  Kobke,  page  eighty-two). 

During  the  seventeenth  century  there  took  place  a  re- 
vival of  interest  in  runes  in  Sweden,  and  runes  came 
again  to  be  used  in  inscriptions  on  monuments  and  other- 
wise." The  influence  of  Bureus  through  his  Runakdns- 
lones  Larospdn  (1599)  and  his  various  ABC  books  on 
runes  (1611,  1612,  1624)  must  have  been  considerable. 
Modern  rune-inscribed  gravestones  exist  in  Sweden, 
among  them  three  of  recent  date  near  Stockholm,  one  of 
the  year  1861;  or,  to  name  earlier  ones,  at  Upsala  over 
the  grave  of  Verelius  and  in  Helsingland  over  Rev.  0.  J. 
Broman's  grave.  And  runes  have  been  extensively  used 
for  other  inscriptions.^^  Runes  have  in  the  modern  period 
often  been  used  by  private  persons  as  private  marks  of 
ownership  in  inscriptions  on  spoons,  chests,  chairs  and 
other  objects  of  use,  further  on  window  frames,  over 
doors,  on  a  stone  in  the  foundation  of  houses,  etc.,  etc. 
In  Land  og  Folk  for  1876,  pp.  24  and  26-28,  N.  G.  Bru- 
zelius  published  a  photographic  copy  of  an  account  of 
such  a  one  as  still  found  and  used  in  Borreby  in  Ingelstad 
County  in  Skaane  until  after  1820.''  These  things  will 
serve  suflficiently  to  point  out  the  extent  to  which  runes 
have  been  cultivated  and  actually  used  in  modem  Sweden 
even  down  to  recent  times."  So  that  it  need  not  surprise 
us  if  now  we  shall  offer  to  point  out  the  precise  modern 
source  of  the  Kensington  runic  letters,  for  if  we  can 
identify  the  alphabet  in  use  on  it,  the  above  survey  should 
have  dispelled  any  skepticism  which  we,  here  in  America 
at  the  present  time,  might  not  unnaturally  have  as  to  the 
likelihood  of  any  immigrant  from  Sweden  having  suffi- 


aoLiljegren,  RunJara,  213. 

o 

siErik  Alund,  De  nordiska  Runoma,  p.  78. 

o 

32Alund  records  several  cases,  p.  79. 

33 As  late  as  1840  there  was  published  in  Upsala  a  work  entitled: 
Svenskt  og  Runskt  Calendarium  in  till  dhret  18^0  samt  Bekrifninff 
ofver  Runstafven. 

3*See  Thorsen,  p.  80. 


24 

cient  knowledge  of  runes  to  be  able  to  produce  an  in- 
scription here  in  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

According  to  Bureus  a  runic  alphabet  was  in  use  in 
Dalarne  in  the  sixteenth  century,  a  statement  which  is 
verified  by  a  runic  inscription  in  the  Alfdal  dialect  found 
on  a  chair  from  Lillhardal  now  preserved  in  the  historical 
museum  of  the  Swedish  Government.^^  This  inscription 
was  dated  about  the  year  1600  by  Sophus  Bugge.  Another 
runic  inscription  which  is  found  over  the  door  of  an  old 
garret  room  in  the  village  of  Orsebeck  in  Orsa  Parish  in 
Dalarne,  is  of  the  same  origin.  It  is  dated  1635,  and  the 
text  states  that  'Erik  Olson  built  this  garret. ""^  Further, 
the  Botanist  Linne  in  his  description  of  Dalarne,  speaks 
of  the  fact  that  runes  were  in  use  in  Alfdal  then ;  i.  e.,  in 
the  eighteenth  century  (1734),  a  fact  which  finds  verifica- 
tion in  Ihre  and  Gotlin's  work  on  De  runarum  in  Svecia 
occasu,  1773,  pp.  20-21,  according  to  which  the  people  of 
Alfdal  made  use  of  a  runic  series  with  certain  new  charac- 
ters for  personal  messages  and  for  other  personal 
records.'"  The  runic  alphabet  contained  in  Ihre  and 
Gotlin  was  reproduced  by  Thorsen,  page  a  hundred  three, 
and  new  forms  later  brought  to  light  have  been  published. 

From  it  we  observe  the  significant  facts  that  the  rune 

for  o  =  X  ^^    st  >  ^^^  <Z  =  1>  both  of  which  we  find  on 

the  Kensington  stone;  it  has  certain  developed  forms  as 

1        and        ^      for  j,      @    for  o,  and  0  for  o."    It 

further  contains  the  runic  letter  i  for  h,  which  in  the 
Kensington  inscription  is  cut  with  the  arms  to  the  left,  the 
Bame  kind  of  modification  appearing  in  the  rune  for  u, 
which  is  further  characterized  by  a  cross-bar.  Especially 


»oThese  facts  from  Xlund. 

>«Thor8en's  statement  i6  as  follows:    Etiam  hodiemo  die  in  suprema 
Dalecarliae  regione  ab  incolis  paroeciae  Elfdalen  Runae  retinentur. 
»'See  Dalarne  inscriptions  of  recent  times  in  Fomvannen,  1908. 


25 

significant  is  the  identification  of  the  troublesome  charac- 
ters for  a,  d,  j,  and  o.  The  alphabet  is  in  some  respects 
different;  in  the  form  as  published  in  J.  C.  Liljegren's 
Runldra,  Stockholm,  1832,  appendix,  it  is  already  some- 
what simpler  and  approaches  the  Kensington  forms.  The 
two  are  the  same  alphabet,  the  only  important  differences- 
being  clearly  due  to  the  scribe  himself.^*' 

A  most  significant  feature  of  the  correspondence  be- 
tween the  two  is  the  symbol  employed  in  them  for  d. 
We  saw  that  in  the  old  series  the  spirant  th  and  dh  was 

represented  by     p        and  d  hj       J      .  Thus  we  are 

forced  to  assume  on  the  part  of  a  scribe  of  the  fourteenth 
century  ignorance  of  the  runic  letter  for  d  used  in  his 
time,  which  is  not  conceivable,  or  ignorance  of  the  pro- 
nunciation of  the  time,  which  is  impossible,  or  else  tJiat 
the  writing  of  thag  for  dag,  and  theth  for  dodh  must 
originate  with  a  modern  scribe  who  is  ignorant  of  the 
pronunciation  of  the  time,  as  well  as  of  the  runic  system. 
Now,  however,  another  explanation  at  once  suggests 
itself.  In  the  Dalecarlian  runic  alphabet  there  is  no  rune 
for  the  spirants  dh  and  th  for  these  sounds  disappeared 
from  the  language  in  the  eighteenth  century  and  no 
longer  exist  in  Swedish  except  locally  and  sporadically. 
But  this  modern  runic  alphabet  came  to  employ  the  rune 

4)        for  d,  owing  to  its  greater  similarity  to  D." 

Thus  the  dental  spirants  do  not  exist  in  our  inscription. 
We  therefore  arrive  at  the  following  new  transcription 
of  what  the  author  of  the  Kensington  runes  had  in  mind 
when  he  wrote: 

8  goter  ok  22  norrmen  po  opdagelsefaerd  fro  vinland  of  vest 
vi  hade  laeger  ved  2  skjaer  en  dags  rise  norr  fro  deno  sten  vi  var 


«80r  to  local  variation,  and  in  the  case  of  the  runes  for  e,  0,  l,  liter- 
ary influence  (ballad  books,  rune-lists,  modern  readers  with  runee  in.) 

••On  the  survival  of  the  rune       J)     see  Kbbke,  pp.  83-84. 


26 

po  fiske  en  dagh  jeptir  vi  kom  hem  fan  lo  man  rode  of  blod  og 
ded.  A.  V.  M.  fraelse  af  illu. 

har  10  mans  ve  ha  vet  at  se  septir  vore  skip  14  dagh  rise  from 
deno  oh,  ahr  1362." 

Our  inscription  is  therefore  the  work  of  one  who  was 
familiar  with  the  Dalecarlian  runes,  he  being  either  a 
native  of  that  region,  or  having  gotten  his  knowledge  of 
them  from  some  literary  source.  The  latter  would  have 
been  a  comparatively  simple  matter,  for  these  modem 
runes  have  been  printed  several  times,  e.  g.  as  late  as 
1832  in  the  appendix  of  Liljegren's  Runldra.  As  the 
language  indicates  (see  below)  the  author  was  probably 
an  immigrant  from  Dalarne  or  that  region  of  Sweden, 
hence  it  is  not  necessary  to  assume  literary  source  for  his 
Dalecarlian  alphabet.  However,  there  occur  runes  that 
are  not  evidenced  in  Dalecarlian  inscriptions,  as  the 
runes  for  0,  n  and  t.*'^  But  these  three  runes  occur  in  an 
interpreted  inscription  printed  on  page  forty-five  of  the 
History  of  the  Language  of  Dalarne  referred  to  below, 
page  thirty  and  a  native  of  Dalarne  may  easily 
have  known  this  work.  Or  he  may  have  learned  them 
through  such  a  work  as  Runelista,  eller  Konsten  att  Ldsa 
Runor,  Folkskolorna  och  Folket  Meddelad,  by  C.  Job. 
Ljungstrom.  published  in  1866  and  in  a  second  edition 
in  1875.  Of  the  second  edition  of  this  publication  2,000 
copies  were  purchased  by  the  Government  and  dis- 
tributed to  the  teachers  of  the  public  schools  in  Sweden. 
It  is  not  even  necessary  to  assume  literary  source  of  the 
non-Dalecarlian  runes.  Observing  the  different  charac- 
ters upon  some  rune-inscribed  gravestone*^  the  one  fa- 
miliar with  Dalecarlian  runes  would  naturally  have  taken 
occasion  to  inquire  of  someone  the  meaning  of  these  (to 
him  new)  runes  and  thus  come  into  possession  of  that 
knowledge. 

Our  investigation  of  the  runic  characters  has,  then,  lead 
us  to  a  particular  Swedish  province  among  the  people 

*oSee  above  page  19. 

4iAs  near  Stockholm,  at  Upaala,  in  Helsingland  and  elsewhere. 


27 

of  which  the  knowledge  of  runes  has  been  preserved  down 
to  recent  times. 

The  correctness  of  these  results  now  finds  most  con- 
vincing collateral  proof  in  the  peculiar  language  of  the 
inscription.  While  the  word  forms  are  modern,  the  nar- 
rative is  neither  in  literary  Swedish,  nor  chiefly  Swedish 
mixed  with  Danish  or  Norwegian  and  English  words,  as 
hitherto  supposed."  It  becomes  quite  unnecessary  to 
assume  such  a  mixture.  The  inscription  is  written  in 
Swedish  dialect.  The  forms  and  words  and  meanings 
and  all  point  to  the  dialect  of  the  locality  where  the  pe- 
culiar runic  alphabet  employed  has  already  directed 
us.  (See  now  the  transcription  and  the  tahle  of 
old  and  modern  forms  on  the  opposite  pageTT  The 
inflexional  forms  suggest  rather  Norwegian  vi  har,  vi 
var,  vi  kom,  vi  fandt,  than  Swedish  vi  hafva,  vi  voro, 
vi  kommo,  vi  funno.  But  there  is  no  such  difference,  of 
course,  in  the  dialectal  speech  of  the  contiguous  dialects 
of  the  two  countries.  Here  the  language  merges  under 
the  shorter  levelled  forms  in  the  verb.  Furthermore, 
large  portions  of  western  Sweden,  viz:  Harjedalen,  part 
of  Dalarne,  Jamtland  and  Bohuslan  were  originally  Nor- 
wegian territory,  ethnically  and  politically,  and  is  today 
linguistically  more  Norwegian  than  Swedish.*  The 
shorter  verb  forms  of  the  Kensington  inscription  are  the 
regular  Dalarne  forms:  vi  fan,  vi  kom,  vi  har,  vi  had, 
while  the  preterite  of  var  is  va.  (See  Noreen's  Dolby- 
motets  Ljud  ock  Bojningsldro,  Stockholm,  1879,  pp.  54, 
56,  58  and  61.)  Further,  the  preposition  fra  is  here  fro, 
and  up  =  op;  the  literary  Swedish  demonstrative  denne 
or  denna  (Nom,  denne)  is  here  dene  with  one  n  (See  Nor- 
een,  Dalbymdlet,  page  53).    The  form  ded  is  simply  the 


*^From.  ded  and  mans  have  been  supposed  to  be  English;  the  final 
rune  in  illu.  not  having  been  identified,  one  writes  as  EJnglish  ill :  lager, 
hem  and  goter  e.  g.  are  literary  Swedish,  while  rise  is  again  by  one 
writer  regarded  as  the  Danish  reise  with  English  spelling. 

*The  districts  named  became  Swedish  territory  politically  in  the 
seventeenth  century. 


28 

dialectal  ded  or  dmd,  according  to  the  change  of  ci  to  6 
which  has  taken  place  in  Orsa  and  the  neighboring  part 
of  Mora  in  Dalarne.  (Noreen's  Inledning  til  Dalmdlet, 
pp.  8-9. 

The  Dialect  of  the  Kensington  Inscription. 

[8  Goter  ok  22  Norrmen  po  opdagelsefaerd  fro  Vinland  of  vest. 
Vi  hade  l^eger  ved  2  skjser  en  dags  rise  norr  fro  deno  sten.  Vi 
var  po  fiske  en  dagh ;  aeptir  vi  kom  hem  fan  10  man  rode  af  blod 
og  ded.    A.  V.  M.  fraelse  af  illu. 

Har  10  mans  ve  havet  at  se  aeptir  vore  skip  14  dagh  rise  from 
deno  oh  ahr  1362. 

8  Swedes  and  22  Norwegians  on  an  exploring  expedi- 
tion from  Vinland  west.  We  camped  over  night  by  2 
skerries  a  day's  journey  north  from  this  stone.  We  were 
a-fishing  one  day;  after  we  came  home  found  10  men  red 
with  blood  and  dead.  A.  V.  M.  Save  from  evil. 

Have  10  men  by  the  ocean  to  look  after  our  ships  14 
days'  journey  from  this  island.    Year  1362.] 

The  Modern   Forms.  The  Old  Forms  of 

Kensington  In-       Dialect  of  Dalarne,                  1362. 

scription.  Sweden, 

vi  hade   .  vi  hade  (had)  vi  haffdhom 

vi  kom  vi  kom  vi  komom 

(vi)  fan  vi  fan  vi   funnum 

(vi)  var  vi  var  (va)  vi  varom 

(vi)  har  vi  har  vi  havom 

se  aeptir  vore  skip      se  aetter  vor(e)  skip  se  aeptir  varom  skipum 

fro  deno  sten  fro  dene  sten  fra  thaessom  sten 

from  deno  oh  fro  dene  6  fra  thaessi  o 

en  dags  rise  en  dags  resa  en  daghs  faerdh 

po  fiske  po  fiske  a  fiski 

ded  ded    (Orsa  locality)  dodh 

fraelse  af  illu  f raels  fro  illu*'  f raels  fra  illu 

op  op  up 

of  o'  (=  of),  ov  af 

fro  fro  fra,    (/raw) 

The  change  of  0  to  6  or  «  is  one  of  the  striking  vocalic 
characteristics  of  these  regions,  thus  dor  becomes  der  in 


♦3See  discussion,  page  29. 


29 

Alfros  in  Hiirjedalen,  hort  and  kort  become  hcsrt  and 
kjcBft  in  Jamtland  (see  Svenska  Landsmdlen,  59,  page 
72),  do  =  dee  in  Alfdal  and  dceia  in  Mora.  Here  also 
we  find  the  explanation  of  the  vowel  in  the  preposition  of 
which  looks  old,  but  which  is  the  regular  form  in  many 
Swedish  dialects  today,  the  vowel  being  very  slightly 
more  closed  than  in  the  corresponding  English  preposi- 
tion. Phonetically  it  would  be  written  av,  our  scribe  not 
finding  it  necessary  to  use  two  runes  for  so  closely  simi- 
lar sounds  wrote  of  a  principal  which  he  also  followed 
in  po^^  and  fro,  where  we  have  the  same  vowel  sound.*^ 
The  preposition  'from'  is  merely  the  dialectal  fro*^  but 
having  observed  the  Middle  Swedish  preposition  fram 
in  some  old  book  the  author  thought  he  would  give  it  an 
ancient  look  by  adding  an  m,  the  result  being  a  hybrid 
which  is  equally  impossible  for  both  Old  Swedish  and  the 
modern  language.  The  plural  man  in  the  second  part  of 
the  inscription  is  clearly  the  colloquial  use  of  a  singular 
with  numerals  with  collective  function,  as  vi  har  ti  man, 
which  is  the  only  way  a  Swede  would  say  it;  the  s  can 
only  be  accounted  for  as  an  error.  The  word  opdagelse, 
which  is  Norwegian  (Swedish  upptdckt)  is  to  be  ex- 
plained as  an  example  of  language  mixture  in  the  Doug- 
las County  settlement.* 

Finally,  the  expression  fraelse  af  illu,  which  has  seemed 
so  troublesome  is  taken  from  the  Lord's  Prayer  in  the 


4*The  reader  may  be  referred  to  Noreen's  Fryksdalsmdlets  Ljudldra, 
Upsala,  1877,  and  Ordlista  ofver  Dalmdlet. 

45The  dialectal  phonology  also  furnishes  us  the  key  for  the  use  of 
the  same  rune  for  a  and  «■  but  there  is  hardly  any  need  of  going  into 
that  here. 

4BWhile  it  is  possible  that  from  in  the  inscription  is  the  English 
'from,'  the  author's  cleverness  in  other  respects  precludes  our  attributing 
to  him  such  a  piece  of  stupidity. 

*AIso  see  above  page  twenty-seven.  Barring  Bohuslan  the  territory 
is  today  linguistically  North  Scandinavian,  that  is  Norwegian,  as 
opposed  to  South  Scandinavian  (Denmark  and  southern  Sweden).  East 
Scandinavian  (Gothland  and  other  nearby  Isles)  and  Middle  Scandi- 
navian (Swedish  proper). 


30 

dialect.  In  Historia  Lmgvae  Dalecarliae,  Uppsaliae, 
1773,  page  seven,  the  Lord's  Prayer  is  given  in  its  dialect 
form  for  Alfdal,  Mora  and  Orsa.  In  the  first  of  these 
the  words  are  loss  fra  vondu,  in  Orsa  they  are  frcels  fra 
vandu,  in  the  Mora  dialect  feds  fra  illu" 

The  final  vowel  o  in  the  demonstrative  deno,  which 
occurs  twice  in  the  inscription,  is  merely  an  effort  at 
giving  an  old  look  to  the  word.  Had  the  author  observed 
more  intelligently  the  old  forms  of  the  books  he  had  he 
would  not  have  committed  such  an  error  as  to  use  a 
neuter  demonstrative  form  with  a  masculine  {sten)  and 
a  feminine  {'6h)  noun. 

The  dialectal  forms  and  words  of  the  inscription  then 
point  to  the  region  of  Orsa  and  Mora  as  the  locality 
from  which  the  author  of  the  Kensington  inscription  im- 
migrated. At  the  same  time  it  may  be  added  that  the 
contracted  verb  forms  and  the  phonological  characteris- 
tics the  inscription  exhibits  are  more  or  less  common  also 
in  the  neighboring  districts,  north,  east  and  south ;  yet  the 
author  must  have  come  from  somewhere  near  Mora  or 
Orsa.  But  this  at  the  same  time  gives  us  a  definite  period 
a  quo  for  the  inscription.  The  old  dative  endings  -wm> 
in  noun  and  adjective  remained  in  these  and  other  Da- 
larne  regions  until  the  nineteenth  century.  This  is  the 
last  fact  therefore  that  the  linguistic  analysis  yields. 
However,  the  date  of  the  inscription  may  safely  be  set 
down  as  nearer  the  end  of  the  century  than  the  beginning, 
probably  between  1880  and  1890. 


So  far  we  have  been  dealing  with  the  tangible  concrete 
facts  of  the  case.  The  moment  we  turn  aside  from  the 
inscription  itself  and  ask  ourselves  the  question:  then 
how  could  the  stone  have  gotten  there?  what  is  its  origin? 


*7The  use  of  the  preposition  of  instead  of  Jra  is  clearly  an  antiquarian 
effort. 


31 

■we  are  on  very  uncertain  iground.  All  sorts  of  conjec- 
ture is  possible.  We  are  then  dealing  with  the  puzzle 
in  the  situation.  If  one  is  weak  on  the  side  of  facts,  but 
has  a  strong  imagination,  as  some  who  have  discussed 
this  question  seem  to  have,  one  can  build  up  a  form  of 
belief  on  the  basis  of  things  imagined.  One  may  even, 
it  seems,  believe  that  the  inscription  is  authentic  in  spite 
of  the  irrefutable  facts  of  the  case  to  the  contrary.  But 
these  phases  of  the  question  that  engage  the  imagina- 
tion have  no  scientific  value  to  the  archeologist  or  the 
philologist.  All  that  he  as  a  scientist  is  concerned  with 
are  the  facts  which  prove  or  disprove  the  authenticity 
of  the  inscription.  For  him  the  stone,  proved  a  forgery, 
has  no  further  interest. 

The  record  of  archeological  fakes  is  a  long  one.  Here 
in  America,  too,  the  scientist  has  more  than  once  had 
forced  upon  him  the  fact  of  the  fraudulent  character  of 
reported  archeological  finds.  Western  Minnesota,  the 
Red  River  Valley  especially,  appears  to  have  been  a  fer- 
tile field  for  the  exploitation  of  similar  frauds.  The  petri- 
fied man  of  Warren,  as  being  evidently  the  petrified  re- 
mains of  a  European  white  from  pre-Columbian  times, 
netted  a  handsome  profit  to  the  two  owners,  until  they 
became  involved  in  litigation,  when  it  was  revealed 
though  sworn  testimony  in  court  that  the '  *  petrified  man ' ' 
had  been  manufactured  by  a  Lucas  O'Brien  of  Crook- 
ston,  Minnesota.** 

The  Elbow  Lake  rune  stone  was  much  heard  of  a  year 
ago ;  its  runes  were  so  much  decayed  with  the  age  of  the 
stone  that  they  could  no  longer  be  read.  It  was  evidently 
of  the  same  age  of  the  Kensington  stone  it  was  said.  But 
a  geological  examination  of  the  stone  itself  proved  it  to  be 
petrified  clay  of  recent  date.  Now  a  philological  test  of 
the  Kensington  inscription  has  proved,  as  we  hope  for 
all  time,  that  it,  too,  belongs  in  a  class  with  the  two  above 
finds. 


■♦sWho  removed  to  California  in  1905. 


32 

But  the  question  is  again  asked,  What  is  the  origin 
of  the  Kensington  stone?— for  the  veracity  of  the  finder 
is  not  doubted.  There  are  witnesses  to  the  fact  that  it 
was  found  (see  Symra,  VII  pp.  180-84)  and  the  weather- 
ing of  the  stone  shows  age.  All  of  that,  however,  was 
also  true  of  the  Elbow  Lake  stone— it  was  badly 
weathered,  there  was  no  doubt  that  it  was  found  and 
the  finder  was  honest  enough. 

To  get  at  the  exact  facts  in  the  case  of  the  Kensington 
riddle  is  no  longer  an  easy  matter.  The  accounts  heard 
and  read  are  already  assuming  a  legendary  character  and 
new  accretions  appear  with  every  new  account.  It  was 
first  reported  that  the  asp  under  discussion  was  a  small 
one;  later  we  are  told  it  was  a  "large  tree"  {Harper's 
Weekly  article  cited  above),  which  to  begin  with  was 
a  very  significant  discrepancy.  Then  there  appear 
exact  figures ;  some  believed  the  tree  was  ' '  over  five  inches 
thick,"  others  said  "seven  or  eight,"  and  again  that  it 
was  "eight  to  ten  inches."  Then  in  a  published  accoimt  it 
was  set  down  as  an  established  fact  that  the  asp  was 
"eight  to  ten  inches  thick."  Again  we  are  told  that  the 
age  of  the  tree  had  been  definitely  ascertained  to  be 
"twenty-eight  years,"  but  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  here 
there  was  evidently  an  established  fact,  the  tree  continued 
to  age  with  most  remarkable  rapidity.  In  an  article  writ- 
ten a  few  months  later  we  are  told  that  the  tree  was 
"forty  years  old"  and  those  whose  attitude  was  that  of 
wanting  to  be  convinced  of  the  authenticity  of  the  find  be- 
gan to  doubt.  Further,  it  was  said,  that  locality  had  not 
been  settled  before  1873,  hence,  if  the  tree  were  forty 
years  old,  it  and  the  stone  must  have  been  there  fifteen 
years  before  the  first  settler  arrived.  But  if  the  tree  were 
twenty-eight  years  old  the  question  assumes  a  somewhat 
different  aspect,  especially  when  we  learn  that  that  lo- 
cality began  to  be  settled  in  1865,  and  had  been  visited  by 
white  men  long  before  that. 


3d 

Then  we  are  told  that  the  finder  evinced  no  interest 
in  the  stone,  that  he  presented  it  to  the  one  who  later 
appears  as  its  owner;  but  again,  we  learn  that  the  price 
was  $7.50  or  $10.00,  which  surely  was  no  large  sum.  But 
this,  too,  is  evidently  legendary,  for  now  we  learn  that 
just  where  the  proprietary  right  in  the  stone  lies  is  dis- 
puted. Finally  the  statement  that  the  stone  had  been 
purchased  by  the  Minnesota  Historical  Society  for 
$1,000  has  been  oflQcially  repudiated,"  etc.,  etc.'^'' 

With  a  view  to  examining  the  stone  again  and  making 
my  own  transcription  of  the  runes,  and  also  to  visit  the  lo- 
cality where  the  stone  was  found.  I  went  to  St.  Paul 
and  out  to  Kensington  April  14-19th.  In  St.  Paul  I  was 
especially  urged  by  a  member  of  the  Historical  Society 
to  see  Mr.  Samuel  Olson^^  as  one  who  was  disinterested, 
knew  the  facts,  and  was  in  every  way  level  headed  and 
intelligent.  I  was  also,  for  similar  reasons,  asked  to  see 
Mr.  Peterson."-  I  did  so.  From  St.  Paul  I  took  with 
me  a  witness  and  at  Kensington  1  engaged  Mr.  Peterson 
to  take  us  out  to  Mr.  Ohman's  farm.  We  spoke  with 
Ohman,  visited  the  site  of  the  find  and  saw  something 
of  its  environs.  I  had  previously  written  Mr.  Ohman 
and  received  in  answer  a  hearty  invitation^^  to  come. 
When  we  arrived  he  received  us  cordially.  Mr.  Ohman 
spoke  Swedish  dialect,  he  told  me  he  immigrated  from 
North  Helsingland  in  1879.  His  language  also  suggested 
that  in  the  locality  Swedish  and  Norwegian  have  been 
contaminated  somewhat,  as  indeed  could  not  help  being 
the  result  in  a  community  where  the  two  nationalities  are 
represented  in  considerable  numbers  and  about  equally. 
Mr.  Peterson  did  not  discuss  the  subject  very  freely, 


49See  Amerika,  Febr.,  1910. 

soThat  the  language  of  the  inscription  is  in  perfect  accord  with  that 
of  the  14th  century  (Harper's  Weekly,  cit.)  is  also  a  part  of  the  legend. 

5iSee  above,  page  5. 

52Proprietor  of  one  of  the  local  livery  stables. 

53The  letter  was  written  in  good  Swedish,  both  as  to  spelling  and 
choice  of  words.  I  later  learn  that  the  letter  was  not  written  by  Mr. 
Ohman,  but  probably  by  his  son. 


34 

seemed  not  to  wish  to  commit  himself  on  specific  points, 
probably  because  he  did  not  remember  clearly  enough. 
He  told  us,  however,  of  various  local  rumors.  Mr.  Oh- 
man  impressed  me  as  honest;  he  was  very  much  inter- 
ested in  the  stone  and  in  learning  what  I  thought  of  the 
inscription.  He  had  seen  the  Forsa  Ring  inscription  in 
Helsingland  before  immigrating,  but  he  disclaimed  em- 
phatically any  ability  at  cutting  runes.  He  pointed  out 
a  tree  which  he  said  was  about  the  size  of  the  one  under 
which  he  had  found  the  stone.  It  might  have  been  seven 
or  eight  inches  thick  and  stood  in  a  cluster  with  other 
chiefly  young  trees,  most  of  it  being  very  young  shoots 
of  asp." 

Later  I  had  a  visit  of  about  four  hours  with  Mr.  Sam- 
uel Olson,  the  jeweler.  He  was  one  of  the  men  who,  the 
next  spring,  excavated  to  a  depth  of  six  or  seven  feet 
where  the  stone  was  found,  believing  that  there  might  be 
a  treasure  hidden  there.  There  was  no  other  stone  of 
any  kind  in  the  ground  below  (see  above  page  four).  I 
learn  further  that  the  stump  was  preserved  for  some 
time;  Mr.  Olson  saw  it,  examined  it,  remembers  it  dis- 
tinctly as  it  lay  there  sawed  off  to  a  length  of  about 
twelve  inches.  Mr.  Olson  says  regar^Jing  its  thickness 
it  was  ''about  four  inches";  and  when  I  asked  him  to 
think  it  over  very  carefully  and  to  measure  off  four 
inches  on  a  table  across  the  room  and  mentally  make  a 
comparison  with  the  stump  he  did  so,  finally  concluding : 
**it  wasn't  more  than  four  inches  anyway."  Now  a 
rapid-growing  asp  may  shoot  up  to  a  thickness  of  four 
inches  in  eight  or  ten  years,  I  am  told  by  those  who  are 
supposed  to  know,  and  it  should  under  no  circumstances 
require  more  than  twelve  or  thirteen.^"     But,  as  that 


54According  to  the  "legend,"  however,  the  stone  was  found  on  a 
hill  heavily  covered  with  tall  timber  (a  veritable  primeval  forest  we 
see.) 

BBA  friend  of  mine  has  a  poplar  thirty  years  old  that  is  ten  inches 
thick.  In  the  case  of  a  hickory  forty-eight  years  old  the  thickness 
was  found  to  be  10%  inches. 


35 

region  was  settled  in  1865,  the  tree  would  seem  to  be 
later  by  twenty  years,  at  least,  than  the  first  settling 
of  the  locality.  In  fact,  the  tree  may  have  grown  up  since 
(been  planted  as  late  as)  1889. 

Then  there  is  the  legend  of  the  skerries  and  the  island. 
Here,  it  is  said,  are  convincing  proofs  of  the  truth  of  the 
narrative,  for  the  skerries  have  been  found  and  that  part 
of  Minnesota  was  under  water  not  many  centuries  since !" 
This  sounds  strange  indeed  to  the  layman  who  has  at 
least  a  little  knowledge  of  the  physiography  of  that 
region.  What  does  one  with  expert  knowledge  say  to 
such  a  seemingly  strange  tale?  "That  it  would  be  abso- 
lutely safe  to  put  1,000  years  back  as  the  nearest  possible 
date  when  that  part  of  Minnesota  was  under  water  to 
such  an  extent  that  those  hills  would  have  been  islands. ' '" 
We  can  imagine  the  Kensington  runemaster's  satisfac- 
tion with  his  own  shrewdness  at  hitting  upon  this  external 
corroboration  of  the  date  he  chose  to  affix  to  his  narra- 
tive. It  has  perhaps  never  occurred  to  the  Committee 
that  our  practical  joker  may  have  chosen  to  designate  a 
hill  in  a  forest  by  the  term  island,'  which  is  neither  an- 
cient nor  rare. 

But  he  was  fertile  in  invention,  our  Minnesota  rune- 
master  !  There  are  a  score  of  lakes  in  that  part  of  Minne- 
sota to  the  north  of  Kensington.  To  say  that  his  imagin- 
ary explorers  had  stopped  by  two  skerries  a  day's  march 
north  was  another  capital  idea;  it  added  a  touch  of  real- 
ism that  should  be  conclusive.  And  it  was  a  perfectly  safe 
thing  to  say,  for  skerries  there  undoubtedly  are  a-plenty 
in  all  that  lake  region.  If  the  author  of  the  inscription  is 
still  living  we  can  imagine  how  he  is  enjoying  the  spec- 
tacle of  the  search  for  the  skerries.  And  now  the  skerries 
have  been  found  also,  somewhere  on  the  shores  of  Pelican 
Lake !    However,  only  two  of  these  lakes  have  been  exam- 

B6So  several  advocates  of  the  stone. 

B7His  further  Btatement  is  "Western  Minnesota  was  under  water 
once  but  that  was  thousands  of  years  ago."  The  answer  comes  from 
a  present  member  of  the  faculty  of  one  of  our  largest  universities. 


36 

ined,  I  am  told.  But,  there  are  more  than  twenty  other 
lakes  to  the  north  of  Kensington  in  DoU;glas,  Ottertail 
and  Becker  counties.^*  I  would  suggest  that  the  shores 
of  all  these  lakes  be  most  carefully  examined;  perhaps 
those  discovered  are  the  wrong  skerries. 

The  discovery  of  these  skerries,  however,  involves  the 
rune-master  in  a  very  serious  difficulty.  Pelican  Lake,  I 
learn,  is  about  sixty-five  miles  north  from  the  site  of  the 
rune  stone.  Now  that  was  no  doubt  a  good  march  to  make 
in  one  day  for  a  company  of  twenty  men  through  a  region 
enchained  with  lakes.  But  ten  of  their  number  had  just 
been  killed  by  Indians,  and  they  would  of  course  have 
fled  with  all  possible  speed.  But  if  sixty-five  miles  regis- 
ters their  capacity  for  the  day,  how  reach  the  Atlantic 
Ocean  in  fourteen  days  P"— and  in  that  time  and  under 
those  circumstances?  And  they  were  exploring  the 
country,  too ! 

The  local  rumors  at  Kensington  and  the  country  about 
are  many.  It  may,  first  of  all,  be  said  that  few  seem  to 
take  it  seriously,  but  they  vary  in  the  explanations  of- 
fered. Some  hold  the  view  that  the  stone  was  brought 
from  elsewhere  recently  and  placed  in  under  the  roots 
of  the  tree,  or  that  the  stone  and  tree  were  planted  at 
the  same  time.  The  stone  being  fitted  in  between  the 
roots  as  the  tree  was  planted,  the  roots  in  their  growth 
would  of  course  have  followed  its  damp  surface.  Some 
go  as  far  as  to  name  Mr.  Ohman  himself  as  the  one  who 
planted  the  stone  there  (or  the  stone  and  the  tree).  But 
the  tree  being  so  young  it  is  not  necessary  to  assume  that 
the  tree  was  planted,  and  Ohman  denies  planting  the  tree. 

Again  it  is  learned  that  a  Dane  of  some  education  who 
had  come  to  America  and  to  Hudson  Bay  in  one  of  the 


ssLakes  Carlos,  Ida,  Christina  and  Milton,  in  Douglas  County;  Battle, 
Otter  Tail,  Rush,  Dead,  Lida,  Lizzie,  Pine  and  Pelican  in  Otter  Tail 
County;  Heigh t-of-Land.  Shell,  Flat,  Cotton,  Round,  Many  Point,  Elbow, 
White  Earth,  etc.,  in  Becker. 

59For  the  inscription  .says  14  days;  To  read  forty-one  would  be  coa- 
venient,  but  the  inscription  says  14. 


37 

Hudson  Fur  Company's  trading  vessels  visited  that  re- 
gion about  eighty  years  ago.  He  may  be  the  author  of 
the  fraud.  But  the  Swedish  dialectal  character  of  the 
words  preclude  that  unless  he  brought  the  stone,  or 
worked  in  collusion  with  a  Swede.  Now  we  know  that 
Norwegians  and  Swedes  occasionally  came  across  in 
Dutch  or  English  ships  before  the  period  of  Scandinav- 
ian settlement— even  in  the  eighteenth  century.  Further, 
we  also  learn  that  the  Hudson  Bay  Company  had 
its  chief  station  at  York  Factory  as  late  as  1859:''' 
every  summer  ships  came  from  London,  by  York  boats — 
the  journey  was  made  along  the  Nelson  River  to  Lake 
Winnepeg  and  down  the  Red  River.''  Early  in  the  last 
century,  we  learn,  French  and  English  explorers  came 
down  the  Red  River  as  far  as  Lake  Ottertail  or  about 
forty-two  miles  north  of  Kensington.  At  a  later  time, 
but  before  the  settling  of  Douglas  County,  there  was  con- 
siderable shipping  carried  on  over  the  Red  River  as  the 
present  settlers  there,  who  came  there  as  early  as  1865, 
are  said  to  remember.  It  is  quite  within  the  bounds  of  the 
possible  that  some  Swede,  a  member  of  some  of  these 
early  parties,  could  have  fashioned  the  stone  and  cut  the 
runes,  provided  he  possessed  the  necessary  skill  at  ma- 
sonry. "- 

But  the  knowledge  of  runes  and  considerable  ability 
at  chiselling  in  stone  were  certainly  among  the  accomp- 
lishments of  the  author  of  the  inscription.  Not  everybody 
who  knows  runes  could  make  them  so  perfect.  Those 
who  have  believed  in  the  authenticity  of  the  rune-stone 
have  said  it  is  well-nigh  impossible  that  any  of  the  early 
settlers  there,  or  still  earlier  adventurers,  should  have 


eoThe  Norwegian  sailor,  Jens  Munk  was,  it  seems,  at  York  Factory 
on  his  visit  to  America  in  1619. 

eiThis  fact  is  made  the  basis  of  an  elaborate  argument  for  the 
genuineness  of  the  stone  in  The  Norwegian-American,  Northfield,  Oct., 
1909. 

«2More  than  one  person,  upon  seeing  the  larger  photograph  of  the 
stone  have  said  to  me:  "That  isn't  old,  the  lines  are  too  perfect;  it 
lookB  as  if  it  were  the  work  of  a  skilled  mason." 


Ji67082 


38 

possessed  the  requisite  knowledge  of  runes.  Now  as 
a  matter  of  scientific  fact  the  lateness  of  the  runes  and 
the  modem  character  of  the  language  does  prove  that 
some  sailor,  traveller,  adventurer,  settler  or  someone  has 
chiselled  those  runes  in  recent  times.  But  even  as 
circumstantial  evidence  the  argument  is  already  mater- 
ially weakened  by  the  fact  that  it  has  been  shown  that  the 
practice  of  writing  with  runes  survived  in  a  portion  ot 
Sweden  down  to  recent  times.  But  it  falls  completely  if 
it  can  be  shown  that  at  least  two  men  versed  in  runes  are 
associated  with  that  locality.*^  And  this  fact  is  the  last 
discovery. 

One  of  these  men  was  a  certain  Svend  Fogelblad,  a 
Swede,  one  time  minister,  examined  from  Upsala  Uni- 
versity. Becoming  addicted  to  drink,  he  was  expelled 
from  the  State  Church;  then  he  emigrated  to  America. 
He  wandered  west  to  Douglas  County  and  was  a  well- 
known  character  around  there  for  many  years.  He  died  in 
1895,  at  the  age  of  seventy.  I  have  spoken  with  those 
who  knew  him  and  I  have  indirect  reports  from  others 
who  were  acquainted  with  him.  They  tell  me  he  knew 
runes,  had  books  on  runes  and  used  to  cut  runes  in  various 
places  with  evident  pride  over  the  art.  Asked  about  him 
Mr.  Ohman  said,  yes,  he  had  known  him,  he  had  been  a 
guest  at  his  house  for  a  week  once.  From  other  sources 
I  learn  that  he  made  his  home  with  a  man  by  the  name  of 
Andrew  Anderson,  a  brother-in-law  of  Olof  "Ohman,  and 
who  owns  a  farm  at  Hoffman,  Minnesota.  Some  people 
at  Kensington  associate  Ohman  and  Fogelblad  together  in 
the  manufacture  of  the  rune-stone.  This  rumor  almost 
takes  the  form  of  conviction  in  the  country  east  of  Elbow 
Lake,  where  also  Fogelblad  was  well-known  and  where 
Ohman  once  worked.  Fogelblad  was  something  of  an  ad- 
venturer and  wandered  about  quite  a  bit  and,  as  one  might 
expect,  had  stored  up  a  fund  of  strange  narratives  with 
which  he  would  entertain  people.    One  of  these  was  that 


«3How  many  others  we  do  not  know. 


39 

Sccmdinavian  explorers  had  visited  that  region  hundreds 
of  years  ago.  This  is  certainly  interesting  in  connection 
with  the  narrative  of  the  Kensington  inscription.  And  it 
is  as  certainly  significant.*  The  other  citizen  of  that  lo- 
cality who,  it  is  testified,  was  versed  in  runes  is  none  less 
than  Olof  Ohman  himself.  I  found  no  evidence  of  the 
knowledge  of  this  among  the  people  of  Kensington.  At 
Kensington  they  say  Ohman  chiselled  the  runes  but  Fogel- 
blad  must  have  prepared  the  copy  of  the  inscription  for 
him  to  follow.  Ohman  came  to  Minnesota  in  June,  1879. 
Before  his  marriage  he  worked  for  farmers  in  various 
parts  of  Douglas  County.**  For  three  years  he  then 
worked  mostly  around  Brandon*®  in  the  same  county.  In 
1884  he  returned  to  Helsingland,  Sweden ;  coming  back  to 
America  in  1886,  he  went  to  Portland,  Oregon,  where  he 
remained  six  months.  Thereupon  he  returned  to  Doug- 
las County  living  for  a  time  at  Hoffman,  the  nearest 
station  west  of  Kensington,  the  same  year  moving  to 
Oscar  Lake  in  the  same  county.  In  1889,  having  married, 
he  bought  and  moved  to  his  present  home  near  Kensing- 
ton. 

There  has  been  current  for  some  time  a  rumor  at  El- 
bow Lake  of  a  Swede  who  worked  near  there  thirty  years 
ago  who  was  versed  in  runes  and  used  to  cut  runes  into 
window  casings  and  other  objects  and  derived  much 
amusement  from  being  able  to  puzzle  people  with  these 
strange  characters.  It  had  not  been  possible  to  verify  it, 
or  learn  who  this  man  was.  A  friend  of  mine,  in  whose 
ability  to  ferret  it  out  I  had  confidence  and  who  is  ac- 


6*And  the  neighboring  county  to  the  west. 

osAbout  fifteen  miles  north  of  Mr.  Ohman's  present  home. 

•Since  the  above  was  in  print  I  have  learned  that  Andrew  Anderson, 
like  Fogelblad,  was  a  student  at  Upsala  University,  but  left  the  Uni- 
versity in  1882,  emigrated  to  America  and  settled  at  Hoffman.  He  la 
said  to  be  well  versed  in  Greek  and  Latin,  in  history  and  Swedish 
literature  and  like  Fogelblad,  possessed  considerable  knowledge  of 
runes.  Anderson  brought  with  him  to  America  a  copy  of  Fryrell's 
work  on  runes,  and  found  in  the  study  of  runes  his  favorite  pastime. 
The  latter  fact  I  learn  from  a  sketch  of  Anderson  in  Amerika  for  Hay 
27,  1910. 


40 

quainted  at  Elbow  Lake,  offered  to  investigate  the  rumor 
for  me.  That  was  on  April  seventeenth.  On  April 
twenty-fifth  I  received  the  following  letter: 

Concerning  Mr.  Ohman,  on  whose  farm  the  Kensington  Rune 
Stone  was  found,  and  who  was  himself  the  finder,  there  seems 
to  be  a  variety  of  opinions  as  to  his  abiHty  or  proficiency  to  be 
the  author  thereof.  He  himself  disclaims  any  proficiency  along 
that  line.  His  word  is  generally  regarded  as  good  by  most  of 
his  neighbors  and  acquaintances ;  and  his  whole  bearing  and 
conduct  ,according  to  one  who  lately  called  upon  him,  stamp 
him  as  one  who  seemingly  would  take  no  delight  in  maintaining 
as  a  truth  something  which  he  knew  to  be  a  positive  falsehood. 
There  is,  however,  another  opinion  held  by  many,  whom  are 
some  of  his  oldest  acquaintances  in  Douglas  county.  According 
to  report  he  was  a  stone  mason,  who  in  his  leisure  moments 
would  write  "rune"  figures  on  the  window  casings,  granary 
walls,  etc.  When,  therefore,  the  Kensington  Rune  Stone  was 
later  found  on  his  farm,  many  doubted  its  authenticity  on  account 
of  the  fact  mentioned  above.  Further,  a  grammar  of  "rune 
skrift"  was  found  in  Mr.  Ohman's  possession.  This  I  know  on 
positive  authority.  Questioned  as  to  where  he  had  it  from,  he 
stated  it  was  given  him  by  a  minister.  It  seems  that  this  minis- 
ter, who  it  is  reported,  had  lost  caste,  sojourned  with  Ohman 
for  quite  a  while,  and  they  were  together  a  good  deal  in  the 
various  places  where  Mr.  Ohman  had  work  to  do.  This  was 
(a)  35-40  years  ago.  The  minister's  name  has  been  found  to 
be  Fogelblad. 

The  grammar,  which  contained  a  runic  alphabet  is  now 
in  the  possession  of  Mr.  H.  H.  Winchell,  State  Geologist 
and  Curator  of  the  Minnesota  State  Museum.  He  showed 
me  the  copy.  In  Fogelblad  we  recognized  our  defrocked 
minister  of  Kensington  and  Elbow  Lake.  Ohman,  it  has 
been  said,  says  he  has  no  knowledge  of  runes.  To  me  he 
disclaimed  '*the  ability  to  make  such  an  inscription." 
But  Ohman  also  denies  having  made  the  inscription.  He 
volunteered  a  denial  of  that,  evidently  thinking  that  I 
knew  that  the  suspicion  is  directed  against  him  and  his 
denial  was  very  emphatic.^*     But   the    latter    does    not 


««!  had  not  indicated  in  any  way  that  I  knew  this  suspicion.  There 
were,  however,  two  other  persons  present  and  one  of  these  he  knew  had 
knowledge  of  it. 


41 

necessarily  imply  much,  for  such  an  emotional  reaction 
would  be  about  the  same  in  the  case  of  a  man  who  is  in- 
nocent and  knows  himself  suspected  as  in  the  case  of  one 
who  is  guilty  but  is  trying  to  conceal  his  guilt.  And 
finally,  relative  to  Mr.  Fogelblad,  Ohman  denies  emphati- 
cally that  Fogelblad  could  have  done  it  or  would  have 

done  it.     However,  !     Finally    there    comes    from 

Brandon,  Minnesota,  information  of  similar  nature.  The 
source  is  Gunder  Johnson,  who  lives  near  Brandon,  and 
for  whom  Olof  Ohman  built  a  house  about  twenty-seven 
years  ago.  He  says  at  that  time  the  latter  had  cut  some 
runes  into  a  piece  of  wood  to  show  him  what  kind  of 
script  they  used  in  the  Scandinavian  countries  in  olden 
times.  When  Ohman  was  asked  about  this  he  answered 
he  could  not  remember,  but  also  that  he  would  not  abso- 
lutely deny  that  he  had  done  it. 

From  Anderson  comes  the  information  that  he,  Fogel- 
blad and  Ohman  would  often  sit  studying  and  discussing 
runes,  presumably  from  Fryxell  and  the  runic  book  or 
books  Fogelblad  and  Anderson  had. 

With  this  fact  I  shall  leave  the  problem  to  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  reader. 

The  Kensington  runic  inscription  is  a  recent  forgery. 
While  the  present  writer  has  from  the  first  time  he  saw 
the  inscription  never  had  any  doubt  upon  this  point,  he 
has  entered  into  a  somewhat  detailed  discussion  from 
a  more  popular  point  of  view  in  order  that  the  layman 
also  should  no  longer  be  deceived.  He  feels  that  the 
public  should  know  the  truth  at  once  as  the  truth  is. 
He  feels  that  in  such  cases  the  scientist  owes  this  service 
to  the  public.  The  Kensington  rune  stone  will  claim  the 
attention  of  archeologists  or  historians  no  longer. 
Proved  a  forgery  as  it  now  has  been,  the  public  surely 
will  no  longer  countenance  it.  We  Scandinavians,  least  of 
all,  should  tolerate  the  injection  of  such  a  fraud  into  the 
history  of  the  pre-Columbian  discovery  of  America  by 
the  Norsemen.     That  discovery  is  an  established  fact 


42 

and  the  record  of  it  has  long  held  an  adorned  place  in 
American  history .^^ 

The  only  interest  that  the  Kensington  rune  stone  will 
have  to  the  scholar  in  the  future  is  that  it  adds  one  more 
chapter  to  the  already  long  list  of  fraudulent  inscriptions 
in  modern  times.  The  number  of  faked  runic  inscriptions 
in  modern  times  is  indeed  considerable.  For  a 
partial  list  the  interested  reader  may  be  referred  to 
Liljegren^s  Runldra^  page  215.  The  difference  between 
most  of  these  and  the  Kensington  inscription  is,  how- 
ever, that  the  latter  is  written  in  a  modem  dialect  with 
only  minor  attempts  at  archaic  forms.  In  the  earlier 
instances  there  was  a  consistent  effort  at  reproducing  the 
language  of  an  earlier  time.  In  each  case  failure  some- 
where to  accomplish  this  furnished  the  means  for  de- 
tecting the  fraud.  Our  runemaster,  not  having  even  an 
elementary  knowledge  of  fourteenth  century  Swedish, 
chose  to  employ  his  own  dialect ;  but  he  was  clever  enough 
to  embody  elements  (as  the  island,  the  skerries,  the  nu- 
meric system  used  and  a  most  apt  date,  1362)  into  his 
narrative  which  were  calculated  to  puzzle  one  though 
they  might  not  long  deceive.  And  the  stone  was  planted, 
later  to  be  discovered.  That  he  succeeded  in  puzzling 
people  is  certain.  For  twelve  years  he  has  deceived 
many  into  the  belief  that  the  inscription  is  an  authentic 
document  qf  American  history.  Though  linguistically  a 
clumsy  piece  of  work,  it  was  in  many  respects  cleverly 
done  and  will  deserve  a  place  in  the  record  of  archeologi- 
cal  frauds  with  the  Cardiff  Giant  and  the  Dwighton  Rock. 

University  of  Illinois,  May  4,  1910. 


«7The  appeal  to  our  loyalty  to  nationality  that  was  recently  made 
In  a  letter  in  Scandinaven  (May  18,  1910,  page  12),  is  as  unscholarly 
as  it  is  dishonest.  Only  he  who  is  ignorant,  or  worse,  will  be  misled 
by  that.  The  appeal  itself  is  a  sad  commentary  upon  him  who  gar* 
expression  to  it.  This  is  not  a  matter  of  loyalty;  it  Is  a  auestlon  %t 
truth! 


43 

APPENDIX. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Philological  Society  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Illinois,  early  in  April  last,  it  was  voted  that 
a  committee  of  seven  be  appointed  to  examine  into  the 
language  and  the  runes  of  the  Kensington  inscription 
with  a  view  to  determining  its  claims  to  authenticity. 
The  committee  appointed  consisted  of  the  following  mem- 
bers:   Dr.  Julius  E.  Goebel,  chairman  of  the  Society, 
Professor  of  German;  Dr.  D.  K.  Dodge,  Professor  of 
English;  Dr.  C.  N.  Greenough,  Professor  of  English; 
Dr.  L.  M.  Larson,  Assistant  Professor  of  History;  Dr. 
H.  S.  V.  Jones,  Associate  in  English;  Dr.  Josef  Wiehr, 
Instructor  in  German,  and  Dr.  George  T.  Flom,  Assist- 
ant Professor  of  Scandinavian  Languages.  On  May  third      joohjl. 
the  committee  held  a  double  session,  afternoon  and  even-     / 
ing.    The  writer  presented  the  above  report  in  full  and 
many  new  points  were  brought  up  and  every  phase  of 
the  question  was  weighed.    The  finding  of  the  committee 
will  later  be  reported  to  the  Society  and  embodied  in  its 
minutes.     I  am,  however,  now  authorized  to  announce 
and  publish  that  the  verdict  of  the  committee  is  that  the 
Kensington  inscription  can  not  be  from  1362,  (1)  because 
of  the  absence  of  the  inflexions  of  the  language  as  spoken 
at  the  time,  and,  (2)  because  it  does  not  exhibit  the  runic 
series  of  the  time,  further  it  must  be  recent  because  the 
identification  of  the  language  with  a  modern  Swedish 
dialect  has  been  conclusively  proved  in  the  paper.    The 
committee's  finding  is  therefore  (1)  that  the  inscription 
is  a  forgery  and  (2)  that  its  manufacture  is  recent.    In 
seeking  a  cause  for  the  fraud  several  members  of  the 
committee  expressed  the  view  that  it  had  its  origin  in  the 
extensive  discussion  of  the  Vinland  voyages  which  took 
place  in  the  late  seventies  and  the  early  eighties. 

It  may  be  added  that  each  member  of  the  committee 
was  specifically  selected  because  of  his  philological 
knowledge  of  Old  Korse. 


UC  SOUTHFRN  RFGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  948  299    3 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  AT  LOS  ANGELES 

THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


